If anyone in the oil and gas industry assumed the al-Qaeda terrorist organization had dried up and blown away, check that assumption.
Just last week, a Kuwaiti security official said detained members of a group linked to al-Qaeda planned to attack Kuwait's 200,000-b/d Shuaiba refinery during the Muslim month of Ramadan, beginning on Aug. 22.
Kuwait's al-Anbaa newspaper reported that the al-Qaeda cell even used Google Earth to acquire images of the refinery, as well as other targets, which included a US military camp and a state security building.
One Kuwaiti official played down the news, saying, "This refinery is very well protected. There is really no way to approach it by land." But there are other ways to approach the facility, and an attack—successful or not—would have been hard on the country.
Three refineries
Kuwait has three refineries with a combined capacity of 936,000 b/d, according to the US Energy Information Administration. The 466,000-b/d Mina al-Ahmadi facility is the largest, followed by the 270,000-b/d Mina Abdullah refinery, and then the 200,000-b/d Shuaiba site.
"High demand over the last 2 years has kept Kuwait's refining sector running at close to full capacity," EIA says, adding, "Kuwait's total oil consumption reached 325,000 b/d in 2007." In a word, knocking out one of the refineries would certainly crimp output.
The foiled plan comes as al-Qaeda appears to be trying to regroup around its Yemeni wing, which announced plans earlier this year to widen the scope of operations to include the rest of what one of its writers called the "agent regimes" on the Arabian Peninsula.
Those plans were summed up in an article by Misha'l al-Shadukhi, entitled "Vision from the Inside: Why do we fight in the Arabian Peninsula?" which predicts that al-Qaeda's "forthcoming fight is with the regime of Al-Sa'ud, which opened the doors of the Arabian Peninsula to the United States."
A ‘puny regime'
In particular, al-Shadukhi says that "the Al-Sa'ud regime remaining after the withdrawal of the US is a crazy notion, for they cannot live without worshipping the infidels," adding, "It is a puny regime, for it was not originally built to protect itself."
Al-Shadukhi claims the Saudi regime was "established for the purpose of becoming an agent for the Crusaders in the Arabian Peninsula, for it is considered the first in oil production…."
He also claims that "for this filthy regime, it would not make any difference (after the US fails and abandons the Islamic land) to make an agreement with new occupiers to replace the US," adding, "Thus, we will leave the war with the US and enter a war with Europe, Russia, or China."
No one knows just how successful the terrorist group will be as it takes on the whole world, but some might say that al-Shadukhi just talks all hat and no camels.
