DUBAI, March 16 (Reuters) – Abu Dhabi state oil giant ADNOC has suspended crude loading operations at the United Arab Emirates port of Fujairah, a source familiar with the situation told Reuters on Monday, after a drone attack triggered fires at the key export terminal.
Some other loading at the hub has resumed, however, two other sources said, with one saying two of the port’s three single point moorings, at which ships dock, are operational.
ADNOC’s crude terminals were targeted in the attack, one of the sources said.
CRITICAL EXIT POINT
Fujairah, located on the Gulf of Oman just outside the Strait of Hormuz, is typically a critical exit point for about 1 million barrels per day of the UAE’s Murban crude – a volume equivalent to roughly 1% of global demand.
Three separate fires were ongoing in Fujairah’s oil industrial zone in the Emirati afternoon, two sources said, including a witness.
Civil defense teams were working to control the blaze, the Fujairah government media office said in a statement, adding that no casualties were reported. It made no comment on oil loadings.
The suspension marks the second major disruption at the vital bunkering hub in recent days. Operations at Fujairah had resumed on Sunday following a separate halt after a drone strike over the weekend.
The attacks come as the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran strangles shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman that normally handles a fifth of the world’s oil supply.
The UAE’s daily oil output has fallen by more than half as the Iran conflict and the strait’s effective closure forced ADNOC to implement widespread production shut-ins, Reuters reported on Monday.
(Reporting by Yousef Saba, Maha El Dahan, Ahmad Ghaddar and Siyi Liui, Additional reporting by Nayera Abdallah, Writing by Yousef Saba, Editing by Bernadette Baum and Jan Harvey)
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