A helicopter operated by Saudi Arabia’s state oil company, Aramco, crashed in an area along the kingdom’s Persian Gulf coast on Sunday, killing all 14 people on board, the Saudi authorities said.
The passengers were Saudi nationals, the country’s energy ministry reported, adding that the authorities were investigating the cause.
There was no indication that the crash was related to the ratcheting up of attacks between the United States and Iran in recent days.
The area where the helicopter went down, Ras Tanura, is the site of a major oil refinery and port that the kingdom uses to export oil through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway that has become a flashpoint during the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran. The strait accounted for about a fifth of the world’s oil and gas shipments before the conflict, but Iran effectively blockaded it.
Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, previously shipped most of its oil for overseas markets through the strait, but since the war began in late February it has rerouted its exports through an overland pipeline to the Red Sea’s coast.
In March, a fire broke out at the refinery and some units were closed after two Iranian drones were intercepted and fragments fell. In recent days, the kingdom had returned to loading crude oil at the port in Ras Tanura, Reuters reported, citing shipping data.
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