RIYADH - Saudi security forces foiled a bomb attack Friday against an oil gathering center where two blasts were heard in Saudi Arabia's oil-rich Eastern Province, industry sources and residents said.
Security forces thwarted an attempt to attack the center in Abqaiq using car bombs, the oil sources said.
Residents of Abqaiq said that they heard two blasts near the plant and saw two burned-out cars outside. It was not immediately clear if the abortive attack was the work of suicide bombers.
Dozens of security forces and civil defense vehicles were seen outside the plant in Abqaiq, 35 kilometers (20 miles) south of Dammam, the main city of the Eastern Province, and about the same distance from the oil hub of Dhahran.
In a statement received by Middle East Online, Saudi oil minister Ali bin Ibrahim Al-Naimi has announced that Saudi security agencies and Saudi Aramco employees forestalled a terrorist attempt at approximately 3:10 pm.
“The incident resulted in a minor fire which was immediately extinguished, and resulted in no changes in the production levels of oil or gas in Saudi Arabia.”
Nuaimi added that production “continues at full capacity and all export operations are continuing as usual.”
World oil prices leapt on news of the attempted attack, the first known to have been carried out against a Saudi oil installation.
Immediately after the news broke, prices for New York's benchmark contract spiked to 62.60 dollars, up 2.06 dollars on Thursday's closing price.
They gave back some ground, however, after industry sources and residents said Saudi security forces had foiled the attempted attack.
Crude oil futures jumped as much as three percent.
It was the first known attempted attack on an oil installation in Saudi Arabia, the world's top crude exporter, which has been battling a wave of violence by suspected Al-Qaeda militants since May 2003.
A Saudi security expert said last September that the kingdom, which sits on a quarter of global oil reserves, had boosted spending on the protection of its oil industry to as much as 1.5 billion dollars a year.
Saudi Arabia currently pumps around 9.5 million barrels of oil per day and has an output capacity of 11 million bpd.
Blair blasts Britons over Iraq war