Houthi missile attack hits Saudi Aramco complex in Dhahran

A missile attack hit Saudi Aramco’s headquarters complex in Dhahran on Tuesday, 13 October, damaging an office tower and setting part of the site on fire as fighting between Saudi Arabia and Yemen’s Houthi movement intensified.

Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry confirmed that an Aramco administrative building in Dhahran had been targeted and said the attack caused a limited fire. No injuries or deaths were reported.

A ballistic missile struck the headquarters complex and damaged the top three floors of an office tower, Reuters reported. The Dhahran complex houses an important operations center used to oversee Aramco’s network of oil fields, pipelines, refineries and export terminals.

There was initially some uncertainty over whether the damage came from a direct missile hit or debris from an intercepted projectile. The Saudi-led coalition said air defenses had intercepted a Houthi ballistic missile aimed at Dhahran and that fragments fell in a residential area.

Bloomberg also reported that the precise cause of the fire had not immediately been established.

The attack marked a sharp escalation in a conflict that has already brought repeated missile and drone strikes against Saudi airports, energy facilities and other infrastructure.

The Houthis had warned earlier Tuesday that Saudi Aramco facilities would be treated as military targets if Saudi forces continued strikes on Houthi-held areas in Yemen. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree specifically named Aramco sites and urged workers to stay away from facilities the group considered potential targets.

Saudi Arabia, for its part, had ordered civilians to evacuate areas around oil facilities in Houthi-controlled Sanaa before airstrikes there. The Saudi-led coalition later hit Houthi targets including fuel and oil infrastructure.

The Dhahran strike followed a series of attacks on Saudi Arabia, including a missile strike on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh that killed 13 people and injured hundreds. The attacks have forced airlines to alter operations and have raised security concerns around major international events in the kingdom.

Several major oil executives withdrew from the World Petroleum Congress in Riyadh after the airport attacks. Executives from companies including ExxonMobil, BP, Shell and TotalEnergies were among those reported to have changed their plans.

Oil markets reacted to the growing risk.

Brent crude rose 89 cents to $106.58 a barrel on Wednesday, 14 October, while US West Texas Intermediate gained 80 cents to $94.94, as traders weighed the possibility of further attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure against prospects for additional Russian fuel supplies.

Aramco’s production system is geographically dispersed and Saudi Arabia has invested heavily in redundancy, storage and alternative export routes.

Analysts said repeated attacks can create another problem: risk premiums.

Traders do not need a major Saudi production outage to push oil prices higher. A credible threat to facilities in the Eastern Province, where much of Saudi Arabia’s energy infrastructure is concentrated, can be enough to force buyers and insurers to price in the possibility of disruption, analysts said.

That is particularly important while the Strait of Hormuz remains under pressure and the wider US-Iran conflict has already tightened energy markets.

The attack also complicates Saudi Arabia’s effort to present itself as a stable international business, tourism and investment hub. The kingdom has spent heavily on global conferences, sports, aviation, tourism and financial services as part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s economic diversification drive.