Saudi Arabia has temporarily closed its critical East-West oil pipeline, a 1,200km (746-mile) conduit stretching across the Arabian Peninsula, after it was attacked by drones on Friday. The drones were reported to have been launched from Iraq, where an investigation is under way. No group has claimed responsibility for the strikes so far.
Plumes of smoke from a section of the pipeline could be seen on video footage from the area. It is understood that equipment used to operate the pipeline was also hit. The closure of the pipeline has halted the flow of Saudi oil exports, which have also been disrupted by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz since March.
A critical artery for the kingdom’s energy exports, it has become all the more important due to the US-Israel war on Iran. The closure of its pipeline comes as Saudi Arabia is drawn into a new front in the Middle East conflict in Yemen, where Houthi forces have made rapid advances along the coast against the Saudi-backed Yemeni government and seized the strategic island of Mayun in the Bab al-Mandeb strait. Here’s what we know about the closure of Saudi’s East-West pipeline and what it means for global energy security: Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday said the East-West oil pipeline, which crosses the country from Saudi’s Abqaiq oilfield in the east to the Yanbu port on the Red Sea in the west, had been hit in the Riyadh and Medina areas by drones, causing injuries and damage.
The pipeline, which is operated by the majority state-owned Saudi Aramco, has been temporarily shut as a “precaution”, according to the country’s Ministry of Energy. Specialised teams have begun steps to “secure the pipeline and assess its safety”, the ministry said. The attack originated in the southeastern Iraqi province of Maysan, according to the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, and neither Saudi Arabia nor the Iraqi government have publicly identified a group they suspect of being behind it. Iraq is home to numerous Iran-backed armed groups, however. Wolfgang Pusztai, a security policy and defence analyst, told Al Jazeera that the drone strikes on Saudi Arabia’s oil pipeline had most likely been carried out by one of these groups.
From Tehran’s point of view, this is them supporting Yemen’s Houthi war objective, which is for Saudi Arabia to withdraw from Yemen,” he said. Iran-backed groups are calculating that the more pressure Saudi Arabia feels from attacks on its territory, the more likely it is to withdraw from Yemen, where the Houthi rebels fighting the internationally recognised government are backed by Iran, said Pusztai. This signals to Saudi Arabia – and probably to the other Gulf states – that Iran can’t be trusted.” The Iraqi government formally condemned the attack, saying it does not accept its territory being used as a “launchpad for attacks against any nation” and that it would take “legal action against anyone proven to be involved”.
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