Houthis claim strikes on Saudi refineries at Ras Tanura, Rabigh and Abqaiq as four tankers burn in Hormuz
Yemen's Houthis say they struck Saudi energy sites including the Ras Tanura and Rabigh refineries and Abqaiq, as Iran reports four tankers ablaze in the Strait of Hormuz and Brent crude jumps to its highest close since April.
Yemen's Houthi movement has claimed a wave of strikes on Saudi Arabia's most important oil facilities, including the Ras Tanura and Rabigh refineries and a production plant at Abqaiq owned by state oil giant Saudi Aramco, in what would mark a sharp widening of the Gulf conflict onto the kingdom's energy heartland.
The claims, made on Thursday, came as the war involving Iran, the United States and Israel entered a dangerous new phase at sea, with Iran's Revolutionary Guards Navy saying four oil tankers had caught fire and exploded in the Strait of Hormuz after striking mines or sailing routes Tehran described as unauthorised.
The Houthis, who are aligned with Iran, said their operations targeted several sites across Saudi Arabia, among them the large Ras Tanura refinery on the Gulf coast, the Rabigh refinery on the Red Sea coast, and the Abqaiq processing facility, one of the largest oil stabilisation plants in the world. Saudi authorities have not confirmed that any of those facilities were hit.
The Saudi-led coalition did say it had intercepted a cruise missile launched by the Houthis towards the kingdom's western region, and on Saturday it reported destroying a drone over the oil-rich Eastern Region, the latest in a series of cross-border attacks that have intensified through October.
The refinery claims followed repeated Houthi strikes on Saudi airports, oil installations and other critical infrastructure this month. An attack on Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport on 10 October killed 13 people and wounded more than 300, according to Reuters, and the group has since threatened further attacks on Saudi airports.
At sea, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy said a fourth tanker, carrying more than two million barrels of crude oil, had struck a naval mine, suffered a powerful explosion and caught fire, Iranian state media reported on Friday. Earlier statements from the Guards had reported other tankers catching fire after hitting mines along what Tehran called an unauthorised southern route near the Omani coast.
Reuters said it could not independently verify the Iranian military's account, and it was not immediately clear whether the vessels named by Iran matched those reported by maritime security agencies. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency said a crude oil tanker was struck by an unknown projectile while completing an outbound transit of the strait, and in a separate report said a vessel was hit on its port side about 40 nautical miles south of Iran's Lavan Island, triggering a fire on board.
Maritime sources also described a limpet-mine attack in which a small boat attached explosive devices to a tanker about 25 nautical miles north-east of Khasab in Oman, disabling the vessel with a fire in its engine room. It was the first known successful limpet-mine strike in the waterway since the United States-Israeli war with Iran began in February, and all crew members were reported safe.
Iran also claimed it had shot down a United States drone over Qeshm Island and destroyed a sea drone, claims the United States military denied. The competing claims underline how difficult it has become to establish a reliable picture of a conflict now being fought across shipping lanes, airspace and energy infrastructure at the same time.
The market reaction was immediate. Brent crude rose 2.4 percent on Friday to 117.64 dollars a barrel, its highest close since late April, as traders priced in the risk of further disruption to supplies through a waterway that carries around a fifth of the world's energy supplies.
What happens next may turn on two separate clocks. The United States holds midterm elections on Tuesday, and reports this week said President Donald Trump plans to resume strikes on Iran after the vote, possibly as soon as 4 November. At the same time, a reported draft framework for negotiations, published on Saturday, proposes transferring Iran's highly enriched uranium abroad and reopening the Strait of Hormuz within seven days of an initial understanding, while Pakistan and Qatar continue to push mediation.
For now, shippers, insurers and oil buyers face a Gulf in which attacks are spreading from the strait to refineries hundreds of kilometres away, and in which every new claim, confirmed or not, moves the price of crude.
