The Oil Drum | Suicide attack on Saudi refinery thwarted

92 comments on Suicide attack on Saudi refinery thwarted

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bjj on February 24, 2006 - 3:50pm

Dave,

A key metric for their success is press coverage, not just barrels removed from the market. To that extent, I think they had a good day. Cost: 3 vehicles, a squad of privates, and some kilos of semtex. Benefit: validation that they have the right strategic target in mind, better operational knowledge, and some serious street cred.

The Iraqi IED's come to mind. The first generation bombs were crude and relatively easy to detect and mitigate. But they learned. Now the devices are more sophisticated technically. And more problematically, IED's have become a decentralized cottage industry, very difficult to root out. And cheapo-deapo when compared to the cost of defense.

They're studying today's tape. They'll learn more. And eventually they'll have a really good day; either through luck or skill.

WTI may have only gone up a few bucks, but Rentech shot up like it had escape velocity. Selfishly, I do want to be on the profitable side of the PO curve. Cripes, where did my altruism go? I know I had it this morning!

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triphop on February 24, 2006 - 5:48pm

Hmm... Not sure that anyone could count this operation as a success. They must have meant to actually disrupt supplies. Additionally while the planners might learn from the incident, the actual bombers have been rendered into little bits.

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Leanan on February 24, 2006 - 6:03pm

I'm sure the actual bombers were expendable peons. Possibly not even real members of al-Qaeda or whatever group was behind this. The people with valuable skills aren't allowed to blow themselves up.

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verstapp on February 24, 2006 - 7:46pm

from this - http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000006&sid=aza4oLZl9FHo&refer=home , "What's worrisome is that the various bombings that have taken place in these complexes in Saudi Arabia so far have all had the markings of being an inside job.''
How I'd do it - find a plant worker, how many ,000 work there?, and suborn him (if he isn't already ideologically so inclined) into taking to work a slightly-heavier-than-usual lunch pail for a while (250g of semtex x however many days adds up to a tidy pile, and as a local he'd probably have an idea of the best place to put it for maximum effect. At an appropriate time, eg when the first bomb of the war against iran lands, set it off.

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louGrinzo on February 25, 2006 - 10:59am

Bingo. This is precisely why security at large, centralized facilities (whether related to energy or something else) is so insanely difficult. With today's weapons technology all you need is one guy on the inside to cause almost limitless havoc with an installation.

And now that CBS is reporting that al Qaeda is claiming this attack was part of a series of operations, it seems that they've finally figured out the obvious way to hurt the West. Even if they don't manage to do any real damage to the energy infrastructure, a steady drumbeat of failed attacks will still add a more or less permanent terrorism premium to the price of oil.

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odograph on February 25, 2006 - 12:29pm

Kinda sad in the internet age that all they have to do is surf the news, columnists, and blogs.

I was reading somone .. John Robb? (link below), about a month ago talking about how a worldwide targeting of oil supplies would be harmful to the west. And then it happens.

http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/

Jeez if any of you guys have good ideas, keep them to yourselves.

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beggar on February 25, 2006 - 5:09pm

My guess is that you are being sarcastic here....?

The importance of oil and all associated production and distribution infrastructure is a given.

Read "Blood and Oil" or similiar books to give an idea of how much this has been talked about just in relation to the US military, let alone private security considerations.

The "badguys" or "evil doers" know all about things like wiretapping and key infrastructure vulnerabilities. They know a fair amount about other things like markets and about conducting their eery public relations campaign as well.

The notion that free discourse on sites such as this aids, abetts, or gives comfort to "the enemy" has either got to be sarcasm or a mistake of some sort, I think.

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odograph on February 26, 2006 - 9:59am

With the "Jeez" line? Not exactly sarcastic.

I really am thinking about this verus "native insurgent" campaigns from 100 or 150 years ago. It really was different when the tribal fighters could not read the Times of London each week to see authors discuss "what would hurt us most."

Maybe a strategist would say that insurgents now have better intelligence of the opposition's political and economic conditions.

That's not something we are going to change (we aren't going to stop talking, or blocade Iraqi internet connections) ... but it does create a change. We have info-saavy insurgents.

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Gets IT on February 25, 2006 - 6:46pm

I'm of the opinion that knocking off a tanker would be much easier and cause 10X more ripples in the west. I think they were not targeting the oil business in general, preferring a specific attack directed at the Saud's. In fact, if the attack was successful, it would probably have had such a tremendous blowback on them from the LIPS, it might have damaged much of their support within the country. And from other posts, at least some people think AQ may not be thinking about a "shoot to kill" policy if the target is Aramco, preferring rather to take it alive. Looking at it from that perspective, and in combination with the hardness of the target, it seems to me that AQ's goal was nothing more than to send the Sauds a special delivery message; "Even after the Grand Crackdown, we are still active in the Kingdom.

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TJ on February 25, 2006 - 11:19am

You really don't have to use explosives. Someone who knows what they are doing and gets into the control room for an hour could severely damage the plant. In the U.S. we have refinery explosions during shutdowns and startups, and that's just by stupidity. If the plant is not well operated and has had regular maintenance, the possibilities for wrecking it are endless.

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Gets IT on February 25, 2006 - 7:06pm

Absolutely correct. Most of these processes won't run with human interference, good or bad. Most operators, other than just making minor adjustments, basically have only 3 real choices, START, STOP or ESD (emergengy shut down). The latest automatic control systems really don't want humans F****** with them at all. Except I disagree that you have to know what you're doing; I think it actually help's if you don't. Really doesn't matter much; you just start clipping those little cables with all the pretty colored wires inside until you're on the way to the afterlife. In other words, AQ doesn't have any plant insiders... yet.

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mcgowanjm on February 25, 2006 - 12:47pm

[When the first bomb of the war against Iran lands: www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.]

Israel faces unprecedented terror and sabotage attacks from every side and from within its territory from sleeper cells of Arab Israelis. Iran activates trained sleeper terror cells in the Ras Tanura center of Saudi oil refining and shipping. The Eastern province of Saudi Arabia around Ras Tanura contains a disenfranchised Shi'ite minority, which has historically been denied the fruits of the immense Saudi oil wealth. There are some 2 million Shi'ite Muslims in Saudi Arabia. Shi'ites do most of the manual work in the Saudi oilfields, making up 40% of Aramco's workforce.
Iran declares an immediate embargo of deliveries of its 4 million barrels of oil a day. It threatens to sink a large oil super-tanker in the narrows of the Strait of Hormuz, choking off 40% of all world oil flows, if the world does not join it against the US-Israeli action.
The strait has two 1-mile-wide channels for marine traffic, separated by a 2-mile-wide buffer zone, and is the only sea passage to the open ocean for much of OPEC oil. It is Saudi Arabia's main export route.

Then it gets worse

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Dave Cohen on February 25, 2006 - 5:30pm

That quote about "inside jobs" came from Matt Simmons. While I acknowledge the danger of this kind of planning, the idea that ramming the gates to the Abquaq with two cars filled with explosives and suicide bombers is simply ridiculous.

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Gets IT on February 25, 2006 - 6:27pm

I'm not sure about the compound bombings. One of those used to be named the B2 compound and was located near the Royal Palaces in Riyadh. Boeing had their AWAC target aquisition programmers living there with other flying mushroom support techs not very long ago, but had moved out. Other companies had taken over the compound and started billing their mideast workers in there when it was attacked. Could have been that AQ was after Boeing/US interests, but missed and wound up hitting the mostly Muslim staff that were there at the time. AQ took some heavy "local critisism" for it, something I had not heard expressed before, or since.

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