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Comment by the_duke | Hacker News Reader

Clickbait title, bad article (completely unsubstantiated/unsourced, openly hostile, ...), and a pretty horrible website in general.

SA inflating their production and capacity numbers is perfectly possible (and probably likely), but that kind of writing is not exactly trustworthy.

But some things to think about:

* With modern drone/missle capabilities, it seems quite easy to severely compromise global oil and gas production with just a few targeted strikes; mainly on the big refineries. Quite scary.

* Is Iran, after years of fighting proxy wars, now moving towards more direct conflict with Saudi Arabia?

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> Is Iran, after years of fighting proxy wars, now moving towards more direct conflict with Saudi Arabia?

I mean the Saudis have been commuting war crimes in Yemen, Iran may've supplied some equipment, but I certainly think the Yemenis would be motivated enough themselves.

The proxies in proxy wars always have their own motivations and agency (see also Egypt, Israel, and Syria in the Cold War; or North/South Vietnam). Doesn't change the great-power dynamics of both sides' sponsors.

Though Iran's role has always been greatly oversold in the conflict, calling Iran a "great-power" in a war against a US backed force is ridiculous.

I was thinking more of the Iran-KSA relationship; in the Middle Eastern context, the defining regional-power conflict is between Iran and the KSA. The anti-Houthi militias are more clearly Saudi and Emirati proxies than American ones.

Come on, call it what it is.

The "anti-Houthi militias" are local branches of ISIS and al-qaida.

Which makes the current US policy even more confusing.

That's complete nonsense. Neither the Hadi (Saudi-backed) nor STC (UAE-backed) types are particularly Islamist; ISIS and al-Qaeda are a third bloc in the rural/desert east that the US periodically bombs, while the Saudis are busy generally bombing Houthi-governed civilians.

That's the official Saudi line and it doesn't take a genius to see its BS:

This whole mess escalated when houthi rebels tried to stop ISIS from taking over the government. Where did those come from? What did the Saudis do? At what point did they started bombing civilians??

Do you see the red line?

The whole mess escalated from fuel price rises, with the help of the former president who had been ousted by the Arab Spring revolt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houthi_takeover_in_Yemen

ISIS and al-Qaeda were not involved in any of the maneuvering around Sana'a, and the Saudi intervention kicked off when they realized that a) Hadi still had a power base in the south, and b) the Houthis were about to capture it

>ISIS and al-Qaeda were not involved in any of the maneuvering around Sana'a,

While true, in many countries a group like Al-Islah would probably be described in the Western media as "linked to ISIS" or something similar. They're part of the Muslim Brotherhood also regularly maligned in the West.

Only by Western media that doesn't know what it's talking about.

Or media that views their connection to the Saudi spread of Wahhabism as similar to ISIS'.

>The anti-Houthi militias are more clearly Saudi and Emirati proxies than American ones

They're still being supported by the US military, with billions in arm sales, tactical support, and a heavy involvement in the ongoing blockade. While the Houthi forces can claim rather minor support from Iran.

Just to say: people have known this for absolutely years and OPEC nations have been lying about production/reserves/everything since the cartel was formed.

And yes, it is unsourced...because the point is very much that OPEC is using this data to determine things like production share, so there is a massive incentive to fabricate data which no-one can prove.

Guarding a refinery is at least doable in principle, but most oil is transported there by way of a pipeline. Guarding miles and miles of pipes in the middle of nowhere is going to be prohibitively expensive.

The Trans-Arabian pipeline for example is a whopping 1214 km (754 mi) long[0]!

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Arabian_Pipeline

>The Trans-Arabian pipeline for example is a whopping 1214 km (754 mi) long[0]!

FYI it's not in use anymore.

Trans-Alaskan is even slightly longer (800mi/1300km) and more importantly totally exposed - it's overground for many hundreds of miles (because you can't bury a pipeline in permafrost, it would melt the permafrost and sink the pipeline, breaking it).

Bottom line is that crazy shit happens. There is no way to mitigate all the substantial risks.

754 security guards on dirt bikes with radios? Maybe a helicopter on standby.

Ah yes, "dude on a dirt bike with a radio and rifle" - the supreme air defence asset of our time.

Seriously, this might work for stopping people walking up to the pipeline with explosives - but it wouldn't stop someone with an RPG, recreational drone or (lol) cruise missile.

Are you sure that guarding a refinery is doable in principle? One mortar crew in the back of a pickup truck gets within 5km of a refinery for a few minutes and the facility is burning. If someone can get access to a towed artillery piece that 5km goes up to 20km.

I think this will prompt other countries on the ME who haven’t yet embraced unconventional warfare, uavs in particular, to begin familiarization and adoption and then use it strategically. SA are overinvested in conventional defense and offense. I imagine they’re looking to ramp up quickly.

The Turks have: https://theintercept.com/2019/05/14/turkey-second-drone-age/

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