https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/...ant-points-to-well-targeted-swarm-attack.html
This is a great blog but the real gem is comment section below that has some fantastic analysis.
Damage At Saudi Oil Plant Points To Well Targeted Swarm Attack
Saturday's attack on the Saudi oil and gas processing station in Abqaiq hit its stabilization facility:
Soon after the attack U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went into full 'blame Iran' mode:
Secretary Pompeo @SecPompeo - 21:59 UTC · Sep 14, 2019
Tehran is behind nearly 100 attacks on Saudi Arabia while Rouhani and Zarif pretend to engage in diplomacy. Amid all the calls for de-escalation, Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply. There is no evidence the attacks came from Yemen.
We call on all nations to publicly and unequivocally condemn Iran’s attacks. The United States will work with our partners and allies to ensure that energy markets remain well supplied and Iran is held accountable for its aggression
Abqaiq lies at the heart of the Saudi oil infrastructure. It processes more than half of the Saudi oil output
The pictures show some 17 points of impact. There are cars visible in the second more detailed picture that demonstrate the gigantic size of the place. The targets were carefully selected. At least 11 of those were egg shaped tanks with a diameter of some 30 meter (100 foot). These are likely tanks for pressurized (liquidized) gas that receive the condensate vapor from the stabilization process. They all have now quite neat holes in their upper shells.
The piping to and from the egg shaped tanks shows that these were configured in groups with double redundancy. Two tanks beside each other share one piping system. Two of such twin tanks are next to each other with lines to their processing train. There are a total of three such groups. Damage to any one tank or group would not stop the production process. The products would be routed to another similar tank or group. But with all tanks of this one special type taken out the production chain is now interrupted.
Two processing areas were hit and show fire damage. At least the control equipment of both was likely
completely destroyed:
Consultancy Rapidan Energy Group said images of the Abqaiq facility after the attack showed about five of its stabilization towers appeared to have been destroyed, and would take months to rebuild - something that could curtail output for a prolonged period.
“However Saudi Aramco keeps some redundancy in the system to maintain production during maintenance,” Rapidan added, meaning operations could return to pre-attack levels sooner.....................(the rest can be read at the link at the beginning of the post)
