KHURAIS: The
dramatic weekend assault on two Saudi oil facilities saw one of the targets
struck four times sparking fires that took five hours to extinguish, the
national oil company said Friday. At the Khurais plant in eastern Saudi Arabia,
a charred web of pipes and supports was flanked by cranes as staff assessed the
extensive damage to an oil stabilizer apparatus.

The US has blamed
Iran for the attacks, which have been claimed by Tehran-backed Yemeni rebels,
condemning them as an "act of war" which knocked out half the
kingdom's oil production. "There were more than 200 to 300 people inside
the facilities," said Fahad Al-Abdulkareem, a general manager at the
state-controlled Saudi Aramco oil company, as he inspected the damage.

The company flew
in dozens of journalists, both local and foreign, on an Aramco jet to see the
aftermath of the attacks which have ratcheted up tensions in the tinderbox
region. "The whole thing had happened, with four strikes and explosions,
with no single injury to any of them," Abdulkareem said. Thick metal
piping was badly warped and peppered with shrapnel during the aerial strikes
and lay strewn around the area of the attack. Saudi officials this week
unveiled what they said were fragments of 25 drones and cruise missiles fired
at the two oil facilities yesterday.

Despite the
extent of the damage, managers remain optimistic that production can be fully
restored by the end of September. "An emergency team was assembled to
restore the plant and the activities and bring the crude and the oil back.
Within 24 hours, 30 percent of the plant was in production," said
Abdulkareem. "We will have production at the same level as before the
strike by the end of this month - we are coming back stronger."

Cyber attacks

Iran denied
yesterday its oil infrastructure had been successfully attacked by a cyber
operation, after reports of disruptions to the sector online. "Contrary to
Western media claims, investigations done today show no successful cyber attack
was made on the country's oil installations and other crucial
infrastructure," the government's cyber security office said. The
statement did not specify which reports it was addressing.

NetBlocks, an
organization that tracks internet outages, tweeted yesterday that "network
data show intermittent disruptions to internet connectivity in #Iran." But
it said the cause was unclear and impact limited, affecting "online
industrial and government platforms" and specific providers. "Data
are consistent with a cyber attack or unplanned technical incident on affected
networks as opposed to a purposeful withdrawal or shutdown incident," it
added.

Iran's
Telecommunications Minister Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi has acknowledged in the
past that Tehran has "been facing cyber terrorism-such as Stuxnet."
The Stuxnet virus, discovered in 2010, is believed to have been engineered by
Israel and the US to damage nuclear facilities in Iran. Iran at the time
accused the US and Israel of using the virus to target its centrifuges used for
uranium enrichment.- Agencies