The terrorist attacks on the Abqaiq and Khurais oil stations in Saudi Arabia last Saturday raised concerns about the global oil markets with the start of morning trading on Monday.

Oil prices jumped to their highest level in years, reflecting the role played by Saudi Aramco, which owns the Abqaiq and Khurais plants, which were attacked by Iranian Houthi militias.

The Eastern Abqaiq plant plays a pivotal role in the company's daily operations as the largest oil processing facility and the largest crude oil concentration plant in the world.

Abqaiq oil facilities receive crude oil from the gas sorting plants to process it into sweet crude and transport it to Ras Tanura and Jubail on the east coast, to Yanbu on the west coast and Bapco Refinery in Bahrain.

The plant sends the gas emitted as a by-product of the semi-spherical tanks and concentration columns as part of the conversion process, to the natural gas liquids facilities at Abqaiq for further processing.

Abqaiq is the main center for the processing of Arab light crude oil and Arab Light crude oil production capacity of more than 7 million barrels per day.

At the oil terminal, three major processing operations are being carried out: oil, natural gas liquids and utilities, according to Saudi Aramco's website.

Khurais field, located 150 km southeast of the capital Riyadh, has a production capacity of 1.5 million barrels of oil per day.

The Khurais production increase project, which includes the development of the Abu Jafan and Mazalij fields, commenced production of crude oil in June 2009.

The gas facilities at the complex process associated gas with a handling capacity of 70,000 barrels per day of condensate and 320 million standard cubic feet of gas per day.

Source Sky News