PARIS: France is preparing to deploy soldiers, radar systems and defence equipment to help protect Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu energy hub as attacks threaten a strategically important alternative route for the kingdom’s oil exports.
President Emmanuel Macron announced the planned deployment in a French television interview, saying the purpose was to protect the site rather than draw France into the wider conflict.
“We are going to send military resources, that is to say, soldiers, radar systems and defence systems, to protect this site,” Macron said, according to Reuters.
Yanbu has taken on greater strategic importance during the Iran conflict because Saudi Arabia can move crude from its eastern producing areas toward the Red Sea through the East-West Pipeline, reducing dependence on the Strait of Hormuz.
That alternative has itself come under pressure. Missile attacks linked to Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis have threatened infrastructure around the Red Sea route, while disruption has forced Saudi Arabia to redirect more oil through Hormuz and use ship-to-ship transfers outside the strait.
Reuters reported on Friday that Saudi crude exports through Hormuz were on track to rise to about 3.6 million barrels per day in September from around 900,000 bpd in August after an attack on the East-West Pipeline halted exports from Yanbu earlier in the month.
The French deployment is therefore intended to reinforce the security of infrastructure that has become important not only to Saudi Arabia but to global oil supply routes during the conflict.
Macron’s statement did not amount to an announcement that France was joining offensive operations. He explicitly framed the planned deployment as a defensive measure to protect Yanbu.