London (AFP)
The attacks on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia on Saturday, brutally depriving the kingdom of half of its production and generating a record price spike, cast a harsh light on the sector's weak points.
"There are two main lessons for the oil companies," says AFP Anoush Ehteshami, a professor of international relations at the University of Durham, England.
According to him, the first is that "oil installations are, by nature, very vulnerable to all kinds of attacks", given the flammable and explosive nature of hydrocarbons.
"The second lesson is that regional governments and international powers are relatively helpless when it comes to their defense," he continues.
Aware of the risks of its petroleum sites in a region regularly shaken by conflict, Saudi Arabia is heavily investing in sophisticated defense and weapons systems, such as Raytheon's Patriot air-to-surface missiles.
But that was not enough to avoid Saturday's attack, which the United States attributes to Iran, which they say used cruise missiles.
On Saturday, Houthi rebels in Yemen claimed responsibility for the first drone-reported attacks targeting the Abqaiq plant, the world's largest black-gold processing plant, and the Khurais oil field.
Ryad has not yet pronounced on the perpetrators of the aggression, which has awakened the fear of a military escalation between Iran and the United States, with the head of the American diplomacy Mike Pompeo departing for Saudi Arabia to discuss the response of his country.
The events of Saturday show in any case according to Mr. Ehteshami that no defense system, as avant-garde as it is, is infallible.
For Valérie Marcel, a member of the British think tank Chatham House, they prove that "the Saudis must review the preparation and the response capacity of their defense system".
-Cybernetic -
In addition to military-type aggression, cyber attacks are a growing risk.
"All major powers, and even smaller ones that are in a bellicose context, have set up (computer) attack strategies, and in all these offensive strategies, energy supply is present," he said in August. Gérôme Billois, cybersecurity expert at Wavestone.
Russia, China and the United States would have developed such capabilities, but also smaller countries like North Korea or Iran, which can act directly or through criminal groups.
The shock offensive on the facilities of the world's largest exporter of black gold also calls into question global stocks, previously considered abundant.
If the Saudi government has been reassuring, claiming to have already restored "half of the lost production" and that the rest would be by the end of September, the strikes have shown that they can brutally challenge the safety of the country. Saudi oil supply and its vast reserves.
According to Marcel, the margin of safety of the world stocks seems since much less comfortable, because in the event of a major disturbance, the "Saudi stocks will be reduced, any capacity of reserve will be used".
In the immediate future, the Saudi and US governments argued that the market was well supplied - as was the International Energy Agency - ensuring that they could draw on their reserves to make up for the lack of Saudi production.
Strategic oil reserves in the United States have been created for this type of situation, to prevent the country from again experiencing a price increase as in the 1973 oil crisis.
Mr Ehteshami said that, given their strategic nature in both the United States and Saudi Arabia, "these reserves are secure".
"The vulnerability of platforms, refineries, and extraction and loading sites is problematic," he continues.
For Harry Tchilinguirian, an analyst at BNP Paribas, in light of recent events, "the market should raise the risk premium on oil prices, given the vulnerability of the Saudi supply chain and the possibility that an attack of the same type repeating itself".
© 2019 AFP