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The Fujairah Oil Industry Zone (FOIZ) was hit by another drone attack early on 17 March, causing a fire, authorities in Fujairah said.

No injuries have been reported in the attack, and the emirate’s civil defence teams are dealing with the situation and trying to control the fire, the official Emirates News Agency (Wam) reported, citing the media office of the Government of Fujairah.

This is understood to be the fifth attack since the start of March that FOIZ has suffered from drone or debris resulting from interceptions by the UAE’s air defence systems, as Iran continues to hit energy and industrial facilities in the UAE.

Fujairah benefits from its strategic geopolitical location outside the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has blockaded in its ongoing conflict with Israel and the US, choking about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas supplies.

Consequently, oil prices have soared since the start of the conflict on 28 February. Global benchmark Brent broke the $100 mark on 9 March, for the first time since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, rising to a high of $119 a barrel on that day. Prices have dropped since, but it is still trading well above the $100 mark, with Brent recorded at $103.87 a barrel as of 12pm GST on 17 March.

Major midstream oil and gas companies operate key storage and export hubs for oil and refined products in Fujairah, including Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (Adnoc Group), Saudi Aramco – through its subsidiary Aramco Trading – Vopak Horizon, VTTI, Shell, Fujairah Oil Terminal, Brooge Petroleum & Gas Investment Company (BPGIC), Emirates National Oil Company (Enoc), Ecomar, Mount Row and GPS Chemoil.

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Fujairah is crucial to the operations of Adnoc Group subsidiary Adnoc Onshore, which operates a main oil terminal (MOT) there. Located approximately 300 kilometres north of Abu Dhabi, the terminal facilitates the import and export of various crude oil grades, particularly Murban, from the company’s onshore and offshore fields.

Meanwhile, the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline (Adcop) connects milestone pole (MP) 21 at the Habshan oil facility in Abu Dhabi, where stabilised crude produced from Adnoc Onshore fields is gathered for dispatch, to the Fujairah MOT.

BPGIC is an oil storage and services firm that was established in 2013 in Fujairah and started operations with a capacity of 400,000 cubic metres spanning 14 tanks. In March 2022, it announced its intention to increase the storage capacity of four of those storage tanks in the first phase complex.

Separately, in September 2021, BPGIC began operations at the second phase of its Fujairah oil storage complex, adding 600,000 cubic metres of storage capacity across eight tanks. As a result of that expansion, BPGIC’s storage capacity more than doubled to 1 million cubic metres, or 6.3 million barrels, from 400,000 cubic metres.

BPGIC then undertook a third expansion phase of its oil storage facility, which is understood to have been commissioned in 2023.

The third phase increased BPGIC’s oil storage capacity by 3.5 times, raising it to 3.5 million cubic metres, or 22 million barrels, and making the firm the largest oil storage services provider in the UAE emirate of Fujairah.

The third-phase expansion project consists of an oil storage facility with a capacity of 2.5 million cubic metres, a modular 25,000-barrel-a-day (b/d) refinery, and a larger 180,000-b/d conventional refinery.