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Yemen's Houthis struck Saudi Aramco's Jizan refinery with two drones Thursday, keeping the 400,000-barrel-a-day plant offline and lifting Brent crude above $86 a barrel.
Yemen's Houthis said they struck Saudi Aramco's Jizan refinery with two drones Thursday, the latest in a series of attacks that has kept the 400,000-barrel-a-day plant shut since late July and pushed Brent crude above $86 a barrel.
"The strike was precise," a military source told the Houthi-run Saba news agency, adding that the operation responded to what the group described as Saudi drone incursions into Yemeni airspace over Saada and Hajjah, two northern provinces under Houthi control along the border.
WTI crude rose 3.49 percent to $80.91 a barrel while Brent climbed more than 3 percent to $86.75, as the attack compounded supply concerns around the Strait of Hormuz and Red Sea shipping lanes. The Jizan refinery, which also produces gasoline and ultra-low-sulfur diesel, was shut after a late-July strike damaged its integrated gasification combined-cycle complex and tank farm area, with the restart pushed back to around the end of August, according to consultancy IIR.
The escalation comes two days after Saudi Arabia signed a defense pact with Turkey and Pakistan that treats an armed attack on any of the three as an attack on all, and as the Houthis maintain a naval blockade in the Red Sea. Any prolonged disruption around the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a chokepoint for vessels moving between Europe, Asia and Middle Eastern producers, could tighten refined-product supply and lift freight, insurance and energy costs.
Saudi authorities had not commented on Thursday's claim as of press time, and the energy ministry did not attribute the earlier fire to an attack. The ministry said a blaze that broke out at the facility was extinguished with no injuries. Aramco chief executive Amin Nasser said last week that recent attacks on company facilities had caused some production interruptions but that operations could be restored quickly, with no material operational or financial impact.
The Houthis have struck Aramco sites in Jizan and Yanbu before, and separately claimed missile and drone attacks on the Yemeni Red Sea port of Mocha, where Yemen's military spokesperson said seven people were killed and the transportation ministry reported severe damage to port infrastructure. The port sits near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a route that carried a large share of the world's seaborne crude before the group's campaign.
The attacks follow a period of regional escalation that began with the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, after which Iran and its allied armed groups have fired on Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states and blockaded energy shipments. Saudi Arabia responded Friday by forming an alliance with Turkey and Pakistan, though Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said the pact was not directed against Iran and that allies would decide through consultations what support to provide in the event of an attack.
The last time the Houthis struck the Jizan refinery in late July, the damage knocked the plant offline for weeks and contributed to a jump in refined-product prices across the Gulf. With the facility now expected to restart only around the end of August, traders are watching whether the group's repeated strikes extend the outage and deepen the risk premium already priced into crude, which has climbed as Iran conditions the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz on the lifting of U.S. sanctions and the withdrawal of military forces.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
