The largest oil refinery in the Middle East, located in the United Arab Emirates, was hit by Iranian drones, boosting fears of a rise in oil prices.
On Tuesday, a wave of Iranian drones breached Emirati air defenses, striking Abu Dhabi National Oil Company’s Ruwais refinery. The hit is one of the most significant targets struck by Iran since the beginning of the war, and could send out global shockwaves if the damage is significant enough.
“The competent authorities in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi are dealing with a fire that broke out in one of the facilities within the Ruwais Industrial Complex, resulting from a drone attack, with no injuries recorded so far,” the Abu Dhabi Media Office said in a statement.
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The Emirati Ministry of Defense said that the country came under fire from nine ballistic missiles and 35 drones on Tuesday. Eight of the missiles were intercepted, and one fell harmlessly into the sea. The UAE was less fortunate with the drones, however. Nine breached the country’s air defenses. It’s unknown whether all the drones hit the Ruwais refinery or other targets.
Industry monitor IIR Energy said ADNOC shut down the refinery’s lone crude distillation unit, which refines 417,000 barrels per day, and will undertake a plantwide safety shutdown in accordance with procedure.
The entire Ruwais plant can refine up to 922,000 barrels of oil per day, according to Reuters. The plant is the central hub for a variety of the UAE’s economic operations, turning crude oil into gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, fertilizer, chemicals, and other products.
ARAMCO’s Ras Tanura refinery in Saudi Arabia, the kingdom’s largest, was struck last week and knocked offline. ARAMCO CEO Amin Nasser said the plant was in the process of being restarted.
The UAE has been one of the heaviest hit countries by the war with Iran — the UAE’s MOD said it has been targeted by 262 ballistic missiles, eight cruise missiles, and 1,475 drones. All cruise missiles were intercepted, and just two ballistic missiles hit targets within the UAE, but 90 drones breached its air defenses.
A failure to plan properly for the drone swarms Iran has launched at countries across the Middle East has turned into Washington’s biggest headache, and its biggest regret, U.S. officials told Axios. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky offered Ukrainian counter-drone technology to the United States in August, but President Donald Trump didn’t seem to take the proposal seriously.
The drone attacks on Emirati and Saudi oil infrastructure are bad news for Washington, and show Tehran is pursuing the nightmare scenario of ultimate oil industry disruption in an effort to pressure the U.S. to end the war.
A Feb. 18 report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, featuring energy analyst Clayton Seigle, outlined several hypothetical scenarios for how the global oil trade could be disrupted by Iran. One such scenario involved Iran targeting the oil industries of the Gulf countries, including producing fields, gathering and processing nodes, or oil export terminals. Seigle told the Washington Examiner on Friday that such a move would amount to “a very severe step.”
“They’ve done that only in a very minor way so far, with the LNG facility in Qatar and also one of the refineries in Saudi Arabia, but not really the oil export terminals so far. So I would say that the Iranians have not yet played that card,” Seigle said. “They have been hitting those countries in retaliation for having them host the United States offensive. I think that’s still to come, that the Iranians may choose to play the attack the export facilities card. I would not be at all surprised to see that happen.”
The targeting of ADNOC’s Ruwais refinery seems to bear out this scenario and could send oil prices skyrocketing after their fall yesterday.
In better news for the U.S., the past few days have seen a collapse in the number of drones Iran has been able to lob at its adversaries. After consistently launching just above 100 drones per day at the UAE from March 5-8, the total plummeted to just 18 on Monday, and then 35 on Tuesday. Launches at the UAE peaked on March 1 at 332 drones.
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The UAE wasn’t alone in the decline, with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps only launching 55 drones on Monday, a massive decline from the nearly 800 launched on the first day of the war.
The decline, almost as drastic as the collapse in missile salvos, reflects the depleted capabilities of Iran after suffering through the most intensive air campaign of the 21st century.