"The nature of the Saudi oil industry is like our airport system," explains Luft. "If you take out one of the major hubs processing three to five million barrels a day, you send oil prices to an unprecedented level. Even taking one million barrels off the market would be catastrophic."
Saudi assurances about the security of their facilities sound emptier with every passing year. Al Qaeda attacks in the Kingdom have been on the rise since the invasion of Iraq, beginning with a series of May 2003 Riyadh bombings and continuing with December 2004's daring attack on the U.S. Consulate compound in Jeddah. Last week's attempted blow against Abqaiq is the logical and terrifying advance of a thick trend-line.
Even if it is possible to secure the Gulf's major fields, processing and shipping facilities, there is no way to secure the thousands of miles of aboveground pipelines that traverse Saudi Arabia as well as every major oil producing country, from Venezuela to Uzbekistan to Nigeria. The aortic imagery often found in jihadist communiques about oil "The artery of the life of the crusader's nation!" is both a strategic insight for jihad and a fair description of oil's physical role in the global economy. If the Saudi mega-refinery in Abqaiq is a giant exposed beating heart, then the world's pipelines are vast networks of soft, external veins, easily sliced with the military equivalent of a razor from the local pharmacy. "Systems sabotage is amazingly effective," says analyst John Robb. "Small attacks that cost less than $2,000 have caused billions in damages, a return on investment of 100,000 times. Most 'inside the beltway' analysts don't understand systems theory. So they focus on large scale attacks on major facilities, but these aren't necessary. As we have seen in Iraq, protecting major facilities doesn't matter if you sever the connections between them."
Not everyone agrees, of course. Kevin Rosser of Control Risks Group often plays Dr. Pangloss to the pessimists in articles about the threat to Saudi oil flow. In 2004, Rosser assured the Economist that "the golden goose is not a sitting duck." Because of the many redundancies built into the vast Saudi network, he believes any single attack could be easily absorbed without seriously disrupting the global economy.
But should Al Qaeda manage to pull off a large-scale strike at Abqaiq or Ras Tanura, there is clearly no duplicate ready to keep the oil flowing into an ever-tightening world oil market. Not even close.
Whether or not George W. Bush actually meant what he said in February's State of the Union about weaning the U.S. off foreign oil may not matter. If Al Qaeda has anything to say about it, the choice may not be ours to make, after all.
Alexander Zaitchik co-founded Freezerbox in 1997. He is is currently based in Delhi, India.
Saudi assurances about the security of their facilities sound emptier with every passing year. Al Qaeda attacks in the Kingdom have been on the rise since the invasion of Iraq, beginning with a series of May 2003 Riyadh bombings and continuing with December 2004's daring attack on the U.S. Consulate compound in Jeddah. Last week's attempted blow against Abqaiq is the logical and terrifying advance of a thick trend-line.
Even if it is possible to secure the Gulf's major fields, processing and shipping facilities, there is no way to secure the thousands of miles of aboveground pipelines that traverse Saudi Arabia as well as every major oil producing country, from Venezuela to Uzbekistan to Nigeria. The aortic imagery often found in jihadist communiques about oil "The artery of the life of the crusader's nation!" is both a strategic insight for jihad and a fair description of oil's physical role in the global economy. If the Saudi mega-refinery in Abqaiq is a giant exposed beating heart, then the world's pipelines are vast networks of soft, external veins, easily sliced with the military equivalent of a razor from the local pharmacy. "Systems sabotage is amazingly effective," says analyst John Robb. "Small attacks that cost less than $2,000 have caused billions in damages, a return on investment of 100,000 times. Most 'inside the beltway' analysts don't understand systems theory. So they focus on large scale attacks on major facilities, but these aren't necessary. As we have seen in Iraq, protecting major facilities doesn't matter if you sever the connections between them."
Not everyone agrees, of course. Kevin Rosser of Control Risks Group often plays Dr. Pangloss to the pessimists in articles about the threat to Saudi oil flow. In 2004, Rosser assured the Economist that "the golden goose is not a sitting duck." Because of the many redundancies built into the vast Saudi network, he believes any single attack could be easily absorbed without seriously disrupting the global economy.
Whether or not George W. Bush actually meant what he said in February's State of the Union about weaning the U.S. off foreign oil may not matter. If Al Qaeda has anything to say about it, the choice may not be ours to make, after all.
Alexander Zaitchik co-founded Freezerbox in 1997. He is is currently based in Delhi, India.
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