Al-Qaeda threats to attack Gulf oil installations sent jitters through international markets but employees at Saudi Arabia's oil giant Aramco are confident their security measures are adequate. Along the shores of the Gulf at Ras Tannura, the world's largest outlet of crude oil, Aramco staff do not readily provide information about security but seem self-assured all the same.
"We have a (security) system in place... We also co-operate with the government," said a company representative standing on the largest oil tank-farm in the world, which with its adjacent refinery together have a total storage capacity of 52 million barrels.
An eerie silence prevails while hardly a police car appears to patrol the premises. But this stretch, sandwiched between the vast desert and the waters, feels secure.
Two barbed wire fences surround the installations located in the oil-rich Eastern Province, as the land beyond the fence reveals pristine deserts save for the pipelines linking Ras Tannura to other oil installations in the vast kingdom.
Sitting in the watchroom at the top of a 60-metre-high (197-foot) control tower, the chief pilot boasts that every vessel moving across the adjacent waters appears on the radar system.
Saudi "coast guards and Aramco's own security patrol the waters all night", he said, stressing the effectiveness of security measures.
But according to one company official, Aramco's security set-up does not include monitoring the skies over the installations, which is left to the government's air defences.
The radar system also does not detect small fishing boats, which could be used in suicide attacks, such as the small inflatable vessel that ripped a huge hole in the side of the US destroyer Cole in Yemen in October 2000, killing 17 US sailors, and claimed by Al-Qaeda.
Such dangers could render the Sea Island, a one-mile (half a kilometre) long metal platform which can dock six tankers at a time, vulnerable to attacks by small boats eluding the radar's range.
The chief pilot nevertheless played down such a threat, insisting that coast guards monitor the waters thoroughly.
"Fishing boats come to the neighbouring bay of Tarout... Security points in Tarout Island check every boat when leaving" the harbour, he said, requesting anonymity.
The Ras Tannura terminal falls along a roughly 60-kilometre (37-mile) stretch between the two main Saudi ports on the Gulf: Dammam King Abdul Aziz port to the south and Al-Jubail industrial port to the north.
Their proximity may help Saudi forces in securing this entire strategic area.
"We know that many would like to attack us," said an Aramco official referring to members of Al-Qaeda, whose Saudi-born leader Osama bin Laden last month called on his followers to target oil installations in the Gulf as well as Iraq.
"We know, however, that our security measures are good enough to prevent such attacks," the official added.
Aramco said on December 18 that its security was in effect "on alert all the time" to ensure the safety of its employees and installations.
A company official told AFP at the time though that the statement was not in direct response to threats by the terror network.
Suspected Al-Qaeda militants have carried out a spate of attacks in Saudi Arabia in the past 20 months, including a shooting rampage in a petrochemical complex in the Red Sea industrial port of Yanbu that left six Westerners dead last May.
Aramco chief Abdullah Jumah said a few days later that a huge security operation was in place to ensure normal operations at oil facilities and protect personnel.
"Our facilities are protected by technology, by physical barriers, by cameras. We have over 5,000 security guards hired by the company itself," he said. "Over and above that, we have government security."
The desert kingdom sits on a quarter of the world's proven oil reserves and is the number one crude exporter.