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MEOG ProjeCts & ComPanIes MEOG
Aramco deals with fire at Shaybah
saudI arabIa
SAuDI Aramco announced on August 17 that it had dealt with a re at the Shaybah oil eld in Rub’ al Khali (Empty Quarter) following an attack by Houthis from neighbouring Yemen.
A statement from Aramco said that the rm’s “response team controlled a limited re [...] at the Shaybah NGL facility.”
Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Khalid al-Fa- lih said the attack had been carried out “boo- by-trapped drones” at 03:20 GMT, adding that Riyadh “staunchly condemns” the attack.
He said: “This terrorist sabotage follows a series of actions, including attacks against oil tankers, [that are] are aimed at disrupting inter- national oil supplies.”
A spokesman for the Iran-backed Houthi group was widely quoted as saying that it had targeted Shaybah with 10 drones, calling the o ensive the “biggest attack in the depths” of Saudi Arabia.
Aramco added that “there were no inju- ries and no interruptions to Saudi Aramco’s oil operations.”
In April, Aramco released a 469-page pro- spectus ahead of a debut international bond issue, which noted that Shaybah contained
13.6bn barrels of oil and had a maximum sus- tainable capacity (MSC) of 1mn barrels per day (bpd).
A day a er the attack, the uAE’s Ministry of Foreign A airs and International Co-operation released a statement saying that it “condemned the terrorist attack” at Shaybah,
e announcement, which was carried by the o cial WAM media agency, said that the Houthi attack sought to destabilise “security and stabil- ity and poses a grave threat to the world’s energy supply”. eministryaddedthatthesecurityof the uAE and of Saudi were “indivisible”. Shaybah is located just a few kilometres from the Saudi/ uAE border.
e Houthis have launched numerous attacks on Saudi over the last few months. on July 10, Riyadh said that it had thwarted a Houthi attack on a merchant ship in the Bab el-Mandeb strait in the Red Sea.
In May, the militia launched drone attacks on two pumping stations along the East-West pipe- line, which Aramco then closed as a precaution. other similar attacks have been carried out on civilian facilities, including last week’s bombing of Saudi’s Abha Airport.™
Week 33 20•August•2019 w w w . N E W S B A S E . c o m P7