WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 (UPI) -- Friday's failed suicide attacks against oil installations in Yemen highlight the vulnerability of energy facilities in the Middle East.
Yemeni officials said one attack targeted the oil-exporting port in Dhabah area of Hadhramout, and the second targeted the oil refinery and gas-producing unit in Marib.
The country has proven crude oil reserves of 4 billion barrels, according to the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. Department of Energy's data arm.
The attempt comes barely a week after al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri's threatened Western interests in the Persian Gulf on the eve of the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
"We tell you not to concern yourselves with the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan -- these are doomed," he said in a 1-hour, 16-minute video message posted on Islamist Web sites. "You should worry about your presence in the Gulf and the second place they should worry about, is in Israel."
That message and Friday's attempt underscores what many experts have feared since the start of the war on terrorism -- a crippling attack on oil supplies in the Persian Gulf region that would lead to a spike in oil prices and devastate the global economy. Indeed, oil facilities in the Middle East have long been an al-Qaida target. The group has called for attacks on oil installations because, it says, oil revenues go to the enemies of Islam.
A failed February attack on Saudi Arabia's Abqaiq oil facility, the world's largest oil-processing facility, underscores those fears.
"We were very close to it (a catastrophic attack). You have people willing to sacrifice their lives to deny the world its oil," Gal Luft, co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, in Washington, told United Press International earlier this week. "Think about a 747 crashing into one of those facilities, and you'll have major global disruptions."
