Saudis Tighten Oil Security

To enter this vast complex of oil pipelines, storage tanks and processing plants on the edge of the Persian Gulf, employees must pass through a gate with 12 armed guards, then approach a second one where 18 guards and a bomb-sniffing dog stand at the ready.

They surrender their passports for coded ID cards that they swipe through an electronic reader, then enter PIN numbers. Once inside, they are protected by an antiaircraft missile battery and two layers of barbed-wire-topped fencing. A strand of wire capable of detecting the slightest movement encircles the perimeter, and video cameras stand sentinel every few feet, silently surveying the vast hot sweep of sand and sea for intruders.

“The risk is here whether there is a war or not. There is a contingency plan for anything in the world that could happen. We are secure, because we must be secure,” said Bassam Bokhari, a refinery superintendent.

Though the U.S.-led war in Iraq is winding down, experts say there will be a high risk of terrorist attacks on American interests in the Persian Gulf for months or even years to come. The oil industry -- which Osama bin Laden has identified as the “umbilical cord” of the Western “colonizers” -- remains the most obvious potential target.

“Terrorists are more focused on the gulf now than they were before the war, and because the U.S. footprint now is much larger, they will be more attracted to U.S. assets in the gulf -- particularly Iraq, but that would also include Saudi Arabia,” said Jonathan Stevenson, a terrorism expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.

Three-fourths of Saudi Arabia’s oil exports flow onto tankers from Ras Tanura and the adjacent terminal at Juaymah. A major, well-coordinated terrorist attack here or at the huge oil processing center at Abqaiq not far away, counterterrorism experts say, could cut Saudi oil exports in half -- throwing a wrench into the global economy.

In recent months, the Saudi government has substantially boosted security in oil-rich Eastern Province, where 12,400 miles of pipelines converge to process and ship most of the 7.6 million barrels the nation exports daily.

Since February, authorities at Saudi Aramco, the government-owned oil company, have added special intelligence units to a security force now numbering 7,500 men, many of them carrying weapons for the first time. New checkpoints have appeared on roads all over the region. At Saudi Aramco headquarters 35 miles south of here in Dhahran, entrance is limited to residents, employees and their invited guests.

While oil facilities worldwide could be vulnerable, Saudi Arabia is a special case because of Al Qaeda’s historical roots here -- Bin Laden comes from a well-known Saudi family -- and because the Saudi regime is itself an Al Qaeda target. Bin Laden gained substantial support in Saudi Arabia after the kingdom invited a major contingent of U.S. forces onto its territory during the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

For the current Iraq war, Saudi Arabia offered limited support for the U.S. and kept its role quiet. But its oil facilities were the linchpin of a behind-the-scenes effort that diplomats here say was among the most important contributions to the campaign.

Weeks before the war started, fleets of tankers began taking on oil at Ras Tanura and were steaming to the U.S. and Asia before the first bomb fell. Saudi Arabia boosted its production to 9.65 million barrels a day, and as a partial result, U.S. motorists weathered the shutdown in Iraqi oil production by paying less at the pump in recent weeks than they did at the start of the war.

No other country has facilities big enough to shift into overdrive in times of crisis and export an extra 2 million barrels a day. Protecting them, not surprisingly, has always been a key goal of U.S. policy in the Mideast.

Ras Tanura and Juaymah can easily have 12 tankers at a time at their loading piers. Pipelines from six oil fields feed into the terminals and to several tank farms housing some of the biggest oil storage vessels ever built.

“Ras Tanura is a target of targets. You spritz that facility with anthrax or a dirty nuke, and that’s a single point of failure for Aramco, period,” said one Western security analyst who has looked at the company’s security systems and spoke on condition of anonymity. “They still have a lot of gaps, and Al Qaeda is very, very good at identifying gaps.”

Another security source said that while security at Aramco is “superb,” a possible attack instigated by an insider is “the weakest point of the system.”

“Somebody makes the decision to cooperate with Al Qaeda, and that individual has the information, they have the access, and they have the time to do it right,” he said. “That’s the way it’s going to go.”

Aramco officials say they are confident that the protections in place now are adequate.

“For years, Saudi Arabia has recognized the importance of protecting its vital facilities, long before the recent terrorist actions. So we’ve always maintained a high level of security,” said Abdullatif Othman, executive director of Saudi Aramco affairs. “These systems were carefully designed and implemented, we’ve taken additional prudent, reasonable measures to protect our facilities, and we have contingency plans ready to respond to any situation, God forbid.”

Even before the Saudi public began boiling about the war in Iraq, reports surfaced late last year that several Aramco employees were arrested amid suspicions about a plot against Ras Tanura. The government says no employees have been linked to terror plots. “I really, categorically deny this,” Othman said. “It is categorically untrue.”

However, Western sources said several employees suspected of “sympathies” toward Islamic extremists were interrogated. “People won’t talk about it because it’s Aramco.... Aramco is like the king. You’d be better off talking about God having cancer,” said one person familiar with the case.

The questioned employees were connected with Aramco’s information technology department, the sources said.

Authorities found that the employees “weren’t Al Qaeda,” said one source, “but they were Al Qaeda sympathizers.” There was no determination of an actual plot, he added.

Still, Saudi oil officials have reason to be vigilant. About 10 miles from Aramco headquarters in Dhahran, in the town of Al Khobar, a truck packed with explosives pulled up to a military housing complex in 1996 and exploded, killing 19 U.S. servicemen and injuring 500 others, mostly Americans.

Today, the Khobar Towers complex is home mainly to Saudi military officers and their families. A new apartment tower is nearing completion on the site of the downed buildings. U.S. officials identified 14 men, allegedly members of a Muslim extremist group, as the perpetrators, and the Saudis said they arrested and sentenced some of them.

Terrorists struck Al Khobar again in October 2001, when a Palestinian suicide bomber killed an American and wounded four other foreigners in a busy shopping area. There was an attempted firebombing of a McDonald’s in February.

Since the war in Iraq began, fears have risen that terrorists might target foreign workers who support the oil industry. Most Western expatriates have sharply cut back their trips outside their gated compounds.

On the Aramco compound -- a slice of Middle America complete with bowling alleys, movie theaters, softball diamonds and Girl Scout troops -- many of the 2,500 Americans who work here went home on leave during the war.

Those who remained said they have been more cautious.

Jonel Martindale, a resident since 1970, got a scare recently. “My husband and I were walking the dog, and we had some kids pull a gun on us. They were driving by, and they yelled and hung out the window. They said, ‘You’re dead,’ and added a few swear words after that,” she said.

Martindale and her husband got their car and chased the boys down. After the police were called, “they came and apologized, said they didn’t mean anything by it. It turned out it wasn’t a real gun. But it scared us.”

While attacks on individuals are a possibility, counterterrorism experts are more focused on the threat of strikes at “choke points” at Saudi oil facilities. Point No. 1 is the huge Abqaiq processing complex, 40 miles southwest of Dhahran.

Former CIA Middle East field officer Robert Baer, in the May issue of Atlantic Monthly, cited assessments that found an attack on the complex could slow production for seven months by up to 4 million barrels a day.

Getting the facility up and running again could be difficult, added David Pursell, who in an analysis of threats to global oil transport for Simmons & Co. International found that “Saudi Arabia poses the single largest supply disruption threat” from terrorist attacks and other political threats.

Abqaiq is “the biggest risk,” he added. “The processing equipment, although not horribly complex, is not an off-the-shelf item. In other words, the equipment must be ordered ... it could take months to repair -- longer, if the damage is significant.”

Baer also singled out Pump Station No. 1 -- which lifts oil into the major east-west pipeline to the Red Sea -- and Ras Tanura, where he said an attack by boat or submarine “would be devastating [and]

“The Saudi system seemed -- and still seems -- frighteningly vulnerable to attack,” he concluded.

While many analysts agree that these Eastern Province facilities are potentially vulnerable, they also note that most are so vast that a bomb -- even a large one -- would probably disable only a small part of them.

In addition, Ras Tanura has a duplicate export facility 15 miles north at Juaymah, and even if both were disabled, the kingdom could send 5 million barrels a day across the country for export at the Red Sea terminal of Yanbu. Automated systems allow failures to be isolated and shut down, Othman said.

“For Abqaiq to be blown up, you would need a madman with a nuclear bomb,” said Hassan Husseini, a former Aramco official knowledgeable about security issues. He said it is equally difficult to imagine employees being recruited by terrorist groups. “You can’t subvert the employees there into doing it. Because for each of them, their water, their food, their air conditioning, everything depends on those facilities,” he said.

To Western security analysts who have looked at the issue, current measures are reassuring. On the other hand, one said, nothing is fail-safe.

“You can make it happen. Over a period of time, people on the inside can bring in those kinds of explosives,” said one analyst. “They don’t have to take that target out immediately after we get to Baghdad. They have the patience of Job.”