British Military Sent on Secret Mission to Protect Saudi Oilfields

By Staff, OilPrice.com

The United Kingdom has had troops deployed in Saudi Arabia to protect its oilfields from attacks since February this year, The News reported this week, a local newspaper in Portsmouth in the UK.

A small team from the 16th Regiment Royal Artillery, which is based near Portsmouth, were sent to Saudi Arabia to man Giraffe radars, which can track aircraft and missiles up to 75 miles away.

After the report, the UK War Ministry confirmed that the mission was to protect oilfields in Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, from attacks, in the wake of the September 2019 attacks on critical Saudi oil infrastructure that affected half of Saudi Arabia’s oil production, or around 5 percent of global oil supply, for weeks. 

The Saudi oilfields that UK troops help to protect are “critical economic infrastructure,” the UK War Ministry told The Independent.

“Following the attacks on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s oil production facilities on 14 September 2019, we have worked with the Saudi Ministry of Defense and wider international partners to consider how to strengthen the defense of its critical economic infrastructure from aerial threats,” a spokesperson for the Ministry told The Independent.

Opposition parties in the UK criticized the government for not only providing assistance to Saudi Arabia but for also failing to adequately inform the public and Parliament of the mission. 

The report about UK troops helping to protect Saudi oilfields from attacks emerged just after the Yemen’s Ansarullah revolutionaries on Monday said they had fired a missile against a target in the Saudi city of Jeddah and had hit it. The target was a distribution center property of Saudi Arabia’s state oil company Aramco.

Saudi Arabia confirmed on Monday, via its Saudi Press Agency, that there was an explosion at the petroleum products distribution terminal in Jeddah.

On Wednesday, OPEC criticized the attack on the Jeddah facility, with OPEC Secretary-General Mohammad Barkindo saying, “Acts of sabotage such as this are detrimental to energy supply security for both producers and consumers and can lead to much uncertainty and volatility.”