Yemen’s Houthi rebels have claimed responsibility for drone attacks on major oil facilities in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, according to the Associated Press.
The Houthi-run Al-Masirah news agency reported that Houthi rebels successfully conducted a “large-scale” operation involving 10 drones that targeted the largest oil processing facility in the world at Abqaiq and an oil field at Khurais, citing a quote from a Yemen armed forces representative.
Bloomberg reported the drone strikes were the biggest attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure in more than a decade.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the kingdom stopped half of its oil production for the rest of the day, which resulted in 5 million lost barrels, or approximately 5% of the world’s daily crude oil production.
The Saudi interior ministry said the drone attacks resulted in fires at two facilities operated by Saudi Aramco, the state-owned oil company. The ministry noted in a Twitter post that the blazes were “under control,” and the incident is being investigated by authorities.
The Yemen armed forces representative called the attack a “legitimate and natural” response to “the enemy’s aggression and blockade” of Yemen.
Saudi Arabia has executed a military offensive to oust the Houthi rebels from Yemen since March 2015. Many experts believe the conflict is a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which has supported the Houthis.
“We promise the Saudi regime that the next operation will be wider and more painful if the blockade and aggression continues,” the Yemeni representative said.
James Rogers, a drone and security expert and a visiting research fellow at the Department of International Security Studies at Yale University, said it is concerning that the Houthis have the drone capabilities to reach targets within Saudi Arabia and noted the United Nations has opened an investigation into the drones, which have a range of up to 900 miles.
“It is quite an impressive, yet worrying, technological feat,” Rogers said. “Long-range precision strikes are not easy to achieve and to cause the substantial fires in Abqaiq and Khurais highlights that this drone has a large explosive yield.”
