Yemen’s Houthi rebels launch barrage of strikes on Saudi Arabia’s critical energy sites

Yemen’s Houthi rebels unleashed one of their most intense barrages of drone and missile strikes on Saudi Arabia’s critical energy facilities on Sunday, sparking a fire at one site and temporarily cutting oil production at another.

The salvo marked a serious escalation of rebel attacks on the kingdom as the war in Yemen rages into its eighth year and peace talks stall.

The attacks did not cause casualties, the Saudi-led military coalition fighting in Yemen said, but struck sites belonging to one of the world’s most important energy companies and damaged civilian vehicles and homes. The coalition also said it destroyed a remotely piloted boat packed with explosives dispatched by the Houthis in the busy southern Red Sea.

Hours after oil giant Aramco’s CEO Amin H Nasser told reporters the attacks had no impact on oil supplies, the Saudi energy ministry acknowledged that a drone strike targeting the Yanbu Aramco Sinopec Refining Company caused “a temporary reduction in the refinery’s production.”

The disruption, as oil prices spike in an already-tight energy market, “will be compensated for from the inventory,” the ministry said, without elaborating.

Another aerial attack later in the day struck a fuel tank at an Aramco distribution station in the port city of Jiddah and ignited a fire.

The relentless wave of strikes revealed the expanding reach and precision of the rebels and the persistent gaps in the kingdom’s air defences. A sophisticated strike in 2019 on Aramco oil facilities knocked out half the kingdom’s oil production and threatened to ignite a regional crisis – an attack that the US and Riyadh later alleged came from Iran.