The bulk of Saudi Arabia's security system is allocated to the defense of oil system assets. Despite this effort, the system remains extremely vulnerable. The reason for this vulnerability is due to the effectiveness of new methods of warfare being developed in Iraq. A dictum from the newly emerging global guerrilla doctrine is: Avoid direct attacks on highly defended assets. Attack the target indirectly through adjacent systems.
Today's disruption (one of several of this type over the last year) of Iraq's oil terminal in Basra demonstrates how this is done. Sabotage of a main transmission line north of Baghdad shut down Iraq's electrical system in parts of central and southern Iraq on Monday. This outage shut down the oil export terminal for most of the day. This attack likely cost the Iraqi government in excess of $100 m in export earnings alone for a total attack cost of less than $1,000 (see Global Guerrilla math for more).
Last summer, I detailed a Saudi scenario that focused on this vulnerability (as opposed to the ridiculous attacks most "experts" predict on Ras Tanura):
The electricity cell was the first to take action with an attack on one of the two high voltage power lines from the Ghazlan power complex. Since Ghazlan provides over 40% of the power in the eastern province and the electrical network is sparse (and except for a single connection to the central region, isolated), this attack caused over voltages that resulted in a system wide blackout that lasted two days. Oil production from the province was cut in half as systems (refineries, pumping stations, port facilities, etc.) that supported the huge Ghawar oil field were unable to acquire the power necessary for full production.Saudi Arabia has an isolated and extremely vulnerable electrical system. For a global guerrilla, Ghazlan's substations represent the prime systempunkt. Additional systempunkts are available in the field water injection system. Attacks on these systems are 1) relatively easy, 2) will have major impact on the primary target through cross infrastructure cascades of failure, and 3) are difficult to defend without exposing primary systems to attack.