WASHINGTON – When al-Qaida suicide bombers tried on Feb. 24, 2006, to blow up Saudi Arabia’s Abqaiq oil processing facility, arguably the world’s most important petroleum hub, it was taken as a sign of strength that internal security had foiled the attack.
Secret U.S. State Department cables obtained by WikiLeaks and shared with McClatchy Newspapers and other news organizations show otherwise.
Even though 70 percent of Saudi Arabia’s oil exports flow through the Abqaiq facility, Saudi security forces were woefully ill prepared to defend it, investigations into the attack found, according to the cables.
Efforts to fix the problems were hampered by bickering between the Saudi state oil company and the country’s Ministry of the Interior, the cables indicate.
The security of Saudi Arabia’s oil is still a concern five years later as neighboring countries sink into political turmoil and the kingdom confronts growing restiveness among its own Shiite Muslim population in the Eastern Province, the heart of the Saudi oil industry.
U.S. officials declined to respond to requests for comment.
Saudi Arabia, with 12 percent of the world’s oil supply, remains the key to the West’s ability to influence oil prices. Last week, when members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries failed to increase production in a move that Western officials had hoped would help curb rising crude oil prices, Saudi Arabia announced it would unilaterally pump more oil.
Crude prices immediately dropped.
A successful terrorist attack on Saudi oil facilities would wreak havoc on the kingdom’s ability to take a similar step in the future.
“We did not save Abqaiq, God did,” Prince Muhammad bin Naif is quoted as saying in a secret cable that the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, sent to the State Department in Washington on Aug. 11, 2008.
After the attempted attacks in Abqaiq, the State Department cables show, the U.S. and the Saudi government set up a joint working group to find ways to improve security. The U.S. even drafted a team from the Energy Department’s prestigious Sandia National Laboratories to conduct a wide-ranging assessment of design and safety weaknesses throughout the Saudi oil industry.
U.S. officials soon found, however, that infighting between the Saudi state oil company Aramco – the kingdom’s cash cow – and the security-minded Ministry of Interior made improvements in security difficult.
A Dec. 4, 2006, cable from the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh recounts how a top Ministry of Interior adviser plotted to have the Americans exclude Aramco officials from decisions involving infrastructure protection because “the company does not pay enough attention to security issues.”
Months later, an April 25, 2007, document highlights concerns about sabotage voiced by the Interior Ministry’s chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Saad al-Jabri.
“He stated there were Saudi Aramco employees known by MOI to be members of extremist groups,” the cable reportedly said.
Two years later, Aramco fired back, complaining to U.S. officials in the summer of 2009 that Ministry of Interior personnel acted carelessly around combustible materials.
Aramco handed a secret $1 billion contract to U.S. defense firm Northrop Grumman to design and install a perimeter surveillance system that the Americans suspected was intended to keep Saudi security forces away from Aramco facilities.
A secret June 17, 2009, cable sent from the U.S. consulate in Dharan described a meeting between Ambassador Ford Fraker and Aramco CEO Khalid al-Falih, in which Falih complains about the way Interior Ministry forces behaved.
“He noted that after the terrorist attack on Abqaiq in 2005 (sic), Saudi soldiers deployed to protect the infrastructure were smoking cigarettes, driving their vehicles perilously close to equipment,” the cable said.
The cable said that Aramco was resigned to the idea that the interior ministry would be taking a greater role in security, but noted that “Aramco is undergoing a major upgrade to their perimeter surveillance system, in what may be an attempt to mitigate MOI encroachment on Aramco facilities.”
