Photos show the scale of the destruction caused by the drone attacks on 2 Saudi Arabian oil facilities

Aramco opened up the oil facilities to journalists as part of a press trip on Thursday.
Saudi Arabia tell journalists they are working hard to resume normal oil production by the end of September.
The damage was caused as a result of a drone attack on Saturday, shutting down production on around 5% of the world's daily crude oil production and causing oil prices to surge up to 20%.
Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Photos and videos detail the extent of damage caused by the drone strikes on two Saudi Arabian oil facilities last Saturday.

The images were taken and shared by a number of Western journalists on a press tour organized by Saudi Aramco to show foreign reporters the devastation caused by the attacks on the Khurais and Abqaiq sites.

A video posted by the Agence-France Presse to Twitter shows the damage caused to Saudi Arabia's Aramco oil facility in Khurais, east of Riyadh, focusing on a stabilization tower, a key piece of equipment used for refining oil from its raw state into usable products.

The tower appears to be largely burned out, with much of its metal structure twisted and broken.

According to a tweet by Josie Ensor, a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph, the stabilization tower that was hit at 3.31 am and remained burning for four hours.

Images broadcast by Sky News, which was also present on the trip, show the damage to the stabilization tower in even greater detail, with its upper section appearing to have almost completely collapsed as a result of the attacks.

The two pictures below illustrated the extent of the damage to the tower.

Damaged Khurais oil facility in Saudi Arabia Sky News

A video published by Ensor shows a crane close to the burned out stabilization tower, although it does not appear to be actively working on repairing the tower at the moment of the video.

Ensor said alongside the video that Saudi Arabia is trying to press home the message that it aims to have the facility fully back online by the end of September.

Sky also shared footage and images fromthe Abqaiq oil refinery which was worst hit. The image below shows holes blown into the sides of several stabilization towers on the site.

Abqaiq holes in stabilization towers Sky News

The holes are on the north side of the stabilization towers, according to the report by Sky News.

holes in stabillization towers 2 Sky News

The positioning of the holes is one of the reasons that Saudi Arabia and the US say the drone attack was made from the north of the country and not the south.

This is one of the reasons why Saudi authorities say Iran may be responsible for the attack, although investigations are still underway.

Stabilization towers Abqaiq Sky News

"The attack was launched from the north and unquestionably sponsored by Iran," Saudi Arabia's Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Turki al-Malki said at a press conference Wednesday.

"The Iranian regime and the IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], they are trying to hide any evidence" of involvement, he said.

Saudi Arabia has so far stopped short of directly blaming Iran for the attacks, saying only that it "sponsored" them.

NOW WATCH: Heart-pounding video shows a badass Coast Guardsman running down a narco-sub loaded with cocaine and pounding on the hatch