Ghawar Field

What's going on, Wolf? Breaking, Jeff.

A massive plume of smoke is rising from the area of the Ghawar oil field in eastern Saudi Arabia.

It's important to note that this is the world's largest oil field.

Several fires have been detected by NASA firms at the Shedgum and Hawiyah gas plants.

It's not really clear.

You know, there were, there were unconfirmed reports over the weekend coming out that they had struck, uh, Ghawar.

Um, n- not anything that I've seen that, that talks about specifics or an extent of the damage.

But, you know, you have this in conjunction or right ahead of the, uh, WPC Energy Congress, which is scheduled to run through Thursday of this week, and it's at a conference facility that is right on Airport Road.

But, you know, have they, you know, have they done any material damage to what have historically been very well protected and operationally reliable assets? Um, you know, the game's changed for sure.

We just, we don't have a good window i- into kinda what the resolution of this relatively new resumption of, of hostilities between the Saudis and the Houthis.

So, you know, on balance or on the margin, any kind of strike, uh, causing havoc in the kingdom is not good from, from an investment standpoint, so which is, which is more important? I would argue that, you know, if you're getting at and really hurting critical infrastructure and operations disruption, um, in their, you know, in their primary assets, which are fields like Ghawar, then, then yeah, that- that's going to have, uh, certainly a chilling effect.

Well, I, I, I think that's a really good question.

Um, the, the most obvious one, um, is of course that, uh, Ansar Allah is, is following in the footsteps perhaps of Iran in, in the sense that as, as the Saudis or the Saudi allies or allied forces attack and destroy buildings in Sanaa or in, um, um, Yemen as a whole, um, uh, Ansar Allah, uh, escalates by attacks on the infrastructure.

So they've just taken out the major, um, uh, uh, an element of the major oil field, uh, the Ghawar, uh, field, which provide-- was providing thirty percent o-of Saudi Arabia's, um, exports, oil exports.

And they've damaged that, and they continue to damage, um, refineries and oil infrastructure.

The more the, uh, Saudi Arabia attacks, um, Yemen, the more the attacks on the infrastructure, uh, continue.

This incident follows two previous airport attacks earlier in the week.

Adding to the concern, the Houthis also struck the Shaiqam gas processing plant in Saudi Arabia's Ghawar oil field, the world's largest conventional oil field, overnight.

These attacks target critical energy infrastructure and civilian transportation hubs, prompting warnings from the Houthis for airliners to avoid Saudi airspace, which they've declared a zone of military operations.

Closer to home, the IDF and Shin Bet have conducted operations in Khan Yunis, Gaza, eliminating key terrorist figures.

Seven million barrels per day.

It handles crude from the Ghawar field.

Yeah, that was the facility that was supposed to keep flowing after Hormuz closed and after the East-West Pipeline was wrecked.

They still had their Abqaiq facility, which processed seven million barrels per day.

The Saudis are bombed again, and they bombed the Houthis again.

So today, just days after they've repaired the East-West Pipeline, we got a report that Aramco's facility in North Ghawar, the, uh, North Ghawar oil production complex, and there's smoke rising.

There, Paul, maybe you can show quickly the footage for the audience that didn't see it earlier.

Um, and there's smoke rising from the East-West Pipeline or a facility near it after a Yemeni ballistic missile attack.

And five years later in 1948, the company makes its biggest discovery yet.

The Ghawar oil field proves to be the largest in the world.

The enormous wealth it creates transforms Saudi Arabia, and soon modern roads crisscross the ancient desert, and new ports and cities rise from the sands.

The pace of change is rapid and unrelenting.