[Photo: Covid-19: The World is Closed. Thessaloniki, Edwin Hooper.]
By Mahboob Khawaja, PhD
Editor's Note
As I have opined before, I keep hoping that a global challenge, such as this pandemic. Thus far, many nations have not even accomplished national unity, much less regional or global. There are of course reasons for this, the primary being the repeated disinformation on one hand and the distrust of government on the other. This distrust may have been earned and reasonable, or it may have been overblown for political reasons. In the United States, there has been a long-range plan to “dumb down” the citizenry and to encourage distrust of science, expertise, and even reason. Long before the pandemic, it was common to hear “everything is a matter of opinion.” In other words, there is no shared verifiable reality and my opinion is better (not “as good”) than any expert. In fact, anyone who disagrees with “me” is wrong. So it is not just that everyone’s opinion has equal value, but that in the absence of an agreed-upon, verifiable reality, personal belief rules. This latter shift is critical because it not only reflects the nurtured destruction of science and reason but a broad normalization of individual primacy that is central to a narcissistic world orientation. This may point to the attraction of many to Donald Trump.
We are teetering on a brink here and I am not seeing a handhold anywhere. Houthi rebels claim they are behind the drone attack on Saudi Arabia’s largest oil processing plant (Abqaiq) and Khurais oil field with drones, taking almost 6 million barrels of oil a day off the market. The Saudi’s are tapping their reserve, and the U.S., though Kelly Ann Conway, says we are ready to tap ours as well – giving the lie to our vaunted top producer, not dependent on foreign oil lies.
I’ve warned of this before, but the impact on global oil markets of Saturday’s attacks cannot be understated. The attacks knocked offline roughly 6 percent of global oil production and more than half of Saudi Arabia’s output.
The US, and pie in the sky oil investors, have conveniently believed their own hype about the oil as a limitless and available energy source. Forget conflict, forget global warming, and forget peak oil; everything is copesetic here. Meanwhile, reality grinds on and real people and a real planet pay deadly costs.
After almost four years of crushing attacks on Yemen by Saudi Arabia and the US, the Houthi’s found a way to meaningfully strike back. Four years in which one of the worst humanitarian conditions in the world with an estimated 53% of the population on the brink of starvation. The disaster in Yemen is part of a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran in their ongoing struggle for the position of regional power – which was spurred to life by Bush Jr. and Cheney lying the US into invading Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein (and take corporate control of Iraq’s oil reserves).
Now we have an unstable and unchecked president in Trump who is pulled here and there by ego-stroking and fear, and two “allies” – Israel and Saudi Arabia – both advocating to wipe Iran off the map. It is difficult to overstate how badly this could go, or how fast.
Ahh, the days of “No more blood for oil” before we went back to sleep rocked on waves of black gold.
There is more burning in this crisis than oil. I am sure that the pall of fires darkens hopes of a tomorrow for hundreds of millions across the Middle East. That pall could rapidly spread across the entire planet.
Al Jazeera
Drone attacks claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels have caused fires at two major facilities run by Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia‘s state-owned oil giant, disrupting output and exports.
Citing an interior ministry spokesperson, the official Saudi Press Agency said on Saturday the blazes at the facilities in Abqaiq – home to the company’s largest oil processing plant – and Khurais were under control.
“At 4.00am (01:00 GMT) the industrial security teams of Aramco started dealing with fires at two of its facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais as a result of … drones,” it said, without specifying if there had been any casualties.
Two sources close to the matter told Reuters news agency that 5 million barrels a day of crude production had been impacted – close to half of the kingdom’s output or 5 percent of global oil supply.
Online videos showed smoke rising above the company’s facility in Abqaiq as what sounded like gunfire could be heard in the background.
Later on Saturday, the Houthis said the attacks were carried out by 10 drones and promised to widen the range of their attacks on Saudi Arabia, which leads a military coalition battling them in neighbouring Yemen.
“These attacks are our right and we warn the Saudis that our targets will keep expanding,” spokesman Yahya Saree said in a statement read out on the rebels’ Al Masirah TV.
“We have the right to strike back in retaliation to the air strikes and the targeting of our civilians for the last five years.”
The Saudi-led coalition said it was investigating the drone attacks and would confront “terrorist” threats to global energy security.
“Investigations are ongoing to determine the parties responsible for planning and executing these terrorist attacks,” coalition spokesman Colonel Turki al-Malki said in an English-language statement.
He said the Western-backed military alliance would take the necessary measures to “safeguard national assets, international energy security and ensure stability of world economy”.
The Joint Forces Command of the Coalition to Restore Legitimacy in Yemen: Investigations Ongoing in the Terrorist Attack Against Two Saudi Aramco Facilities to Identify Parties Involved in the Attack https://t.co/ShTvP222F0
In March 2015, the Saudi-led coalition intervened in Yemen in support of the internationally recognised President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, who had been forced out of power by the Houthis.
The ensuing war has killed tens of thousands of people and sparked what the United Nations calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
In recent months, the rebels have carried out a series of drone and missile attacks targeting Saudi air bases and other facilities. In August, a Houthi-claimed attack caused a fire at Aramco’s Shaybah natural gas liquefaction facility but no casualties were reported by the company.
Saudi Aramco describes its Abqaiq oil processing facility, some 60 kilometres (37 miles) southwest of Dhahran in the kingdom’s Eastern Province, as “the largest crude oil stabilisation plant in the world”.
The facility processes sour crude oil into sweet crude, then transports it to transhipment points on the Gulf and the Red Sea. Estimates suggest it can process up to seven million barrels of crude oil a day.
The plant has been targeted in the past – in February 2006, al-Qaeda-claimed suicide bombers tried but failed to attack the oil complex.
The Khurais complex is located about 160km (99 miles) from the capital, Riyadh. It has estimated reserves of more than 20bn barrels of oil, according to Aramco.
In a Twitter post on Saturday, US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia John Abizaid said Washington “strongly” condemned the attacks on the two facilities.
“These attacks against critical infrastructure endanger civilians, are unacceptable, and sooner or later will result in innocent lives being lost,” he wrote.
‘Major blow’
There was no immediate effect on global oil prices as markets were closed for the weekend across the world. Benchmark Brent crude had been trading at just above $60 a barrel.
Saudi state TV reported later on Saturday that the kingdom’s “oil exports are ongoing”, citing its correspondent.
Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid, who examined the strategic importance of the oil giant in his documentary titled Saudi Aramco: The Company and the State, said the attack “is going to be a major blow for oil production”.
“Saudi Aramco is not an ordinary company. It is a company which runs the country,” he said from Doha.
“We don’t know how much of the facility has been damaged but this will bring down Saudi oil production to a fraction of what it is now. This will also have an impact on global oil production.”
The attacks come as Saudi Arabia, the world’s leading crude exporter, steps up preparations for a much-anticipated initial public offering of Aramco.
The company is ready for a two-stage stock market debut including an international listing “very soon”, its CEO Amin Nasser told reporters earlier this week.
MBS tells Trump Saudi ‘willing and able’ to respond to attacks
US leader ready to work with kingdom on security as Pompeo accuses Iran of direct involvement in Houthi-claimed attacks.
Saudi Arabia‘s crown prince has told US President Donald Trump the kingdom was “willing and able” to respond to the latest attacks claimed by Yemen’s Houthi rebels on its oil facilities, state media reported.
“The kingdom is willing and able to confront and deal with this terrorist aggression,” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ( MBS) told Trump during a phone call on Saturday, according to the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA).
MBS was referring to drone attacks earlier in the day on two state-owned Saudi Aramco oil facilities, which triggered enormous fires and disrupted global energy supplies.
According to a statement by the Saudi embassy in Washington, DC, Trump told MBS that the US was ready to cooperate with the kingdom to protect its security in the wake of the drone attacks.
In the phone call, Trump also told the crown prince the attacks hurt the US and global economies, the SPA said in an Arabic-language statement
The Houthis, who have been fighting a Saudi-UAE-led coalition in an ongoing civil war in Yemen since 2015, took responsibility for the early morning attacks, which involved 10 drones and caused fires at the facilities at Abqaiq, the world’s largest oil processing complex, and Khurais, a major oilfield.
The attacks on the two facilities cut Saudi Arabia’s crude oil supply by around 5.7 million barrels per day or about 50 percent of its output.
They came as Saudi Arabia, the world’s leading crude exporter, steps up preparations for a much-anticipated initial public offering of Aramco. Riyadh said the fires were contained.
We call on all nations to publicly and unequivocally condemn Iran’s attacks. The United States will work with our partners and allies to ensure that energy markets remain well supplied and Iran is held accountable for its aggression
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Iran of attacking the Saudi oil plants, as he ruled out Yemeni involvement and said Tehran was engaging in false diplomacy.
“Tehran is behind nearly 100 attacks on Saudi Arabia while Rouhani and Zarif pretend to engage in diplomacy,” Pompeo said in a Twitter post, referring to Iran’s president and foreign minister.
“Amid all the calls for de-escalation, Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply.”
He did not provide any evidence to support his claims.
Riyadh has accused Tehran of supplying the Houthis with missiles and drones used in the attacks on Saudi cities, a charge both Iran and the group reject.
The US and other Western powers have offered controversial support to the Saudi-led coalition fighting the Houthis. In April, Trump vetoed a bipartisan resolution that would have forced the US military to end its support to the coalition forces.
‘Already fragile situation’
The United Nations special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, said on Saturday he is “extremely concerned” following the latest developments.
He urged all parties to “prevent such further incidents, which pose a serious threat to regional security, complicate the already fragile situation” and jeopardise attempts by the UN to find a political solution to the fighting.
The incident will likely lead to a further escalation in the multilayered conflict in Yemen, which has left tens of thousands dead and brought millions of Yemenis to the brink of famine.
In recent weeks, a new front in the war opened between the internationally recognised Yemeni government and southern separatists.
The fighting between the erstwhile allies threatens the alliance between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, who back the opposing sides.
With the level of domestic catastrophe and theater in the United States, it is easy to forget that the U.S. has many fingers in many pies, and that one of the biggest self-appointed jobs of President Trump is as an arms dealer. The U.S. is up to its neck in a variety of ways in the disaster of Yemen. I doubt that Trump cares about the level of pain, destruction and death that is happening there, but the rest of us damn well should care. Along with the terrible situation of Yemenis, we need to remember that Yemen has also been a “haven” for other refugee groups – Somali for example. We are so far past anything that is humane here. At the very least we need to be aware of what our government is doing and the impacts of those actions
I am glad that people have hit the streets for the children and families being abused at our southern border, but the continued lack of response to the devastatingly real effects of US military actions (and the actions of those we provision and support) goes on largely invisible and unchallenged. One must at least as the question as to why Yemen might as well be in another universe given the coverage it has received. Similarly, US engagement in Syria and Iraq and Afghanistan go unremarked. My only disagreement with Mr. Street is the singling out of ‘Liberals”, though I too have an expectation of a wider understanding of global affairs. The war in Yemen is no “civil” war. It is a proxy war and the people of Yemen are dying. There is no humanitarian response to address either those displaced by the fighting, nor for the regional famine that has eliminated any possibility for Yemeni’s to address their own crisis.
Even before the uprising in 2011, Yemen was one of the poorest countries in the Middle East. Turning it into a proxy war between Saudi Arabia (with active support of the U.S.) and Iran has literally left the people of Yemen dying in the dust.
I fully agree with Dr. Khawaja’s analysis that we are in the midst of numerous man-made catastrophes that have us on a collision course of both social and environmental devastation from which humanity may not recover. We do not have an unlimited period of playing chicken with the lives of those on this planet. Therefore, we need to stand up and take responsibility for where we are and devise ways forward that do not lead to ever greater problems. Clearly the interests of our so-called leaders diverge significantly from our needs and a survivable future
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