Saudi Arabia’s oil exports took another blow last week when drone attacks knocked out part of the country’s East-West pipeline, halting oil flow and removing 4-5 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil from global supply. It is unclear how long repairs will take, although The estimates three to five weeks, citing two regional officials. The 1,200km (746-mile) pipeline connects the kingdom’s main oil-producing fields in the east of the country with Yanbu port on the Red Sea coast in the west, allowing Saudi crude to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, which has largely remained closed since the United States-Israel war on Iran began on February 28.
As the world’s second-largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia’s ability to keep crude flowing has significant consequences for global energy markets. Al Jazeera asked experts what alternatives remain, how the disruption could affect buyers worldwide, and what it means for the kingdom’s revenues. Total Saudi crude loadings, which topped 7.5 million bpd in January and February, had fallen to about 2.3 million bpd in August and roughly 2.1 million bpd in the first half of September – a drop of more than 70 percent.
Analysts caution the real loadings figure may run somewhat higher, since shuttle tankers crossing Hormuz with tracking switched off aren’t always captured in vessel data. Saudi exports are built around two coastal passages – the Gulf in the east, where crude moves out through the Strait of Hormuz, and the Red Sea in the west, where it can travel either north through the Suez Canal and Sumed Pipeline, or south through the Bab al-Mandeb strait. Before the crisis, most Saudi crude left on ships through the Strait of Hormuz, the 39km (24-mile) shipping choke point connecting the Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, and the open sea beyond.
Saudi Arabia was exporting about 7-8 million bpd of oil, with most seaborne volumes loading at the terminals of Ras Tanura and Ras al-Ju’aymah, and the former averaging about 5.4 million bpd in 2025. The route is the most direct and economical way to reach Asia, which buys the bulk of Saudi crude exports. With the western pipeline route closed and the Red Sea’s southern route hostile, Saudi Arabia has little choice but to push exports back through the Gulf – despite the restrictions, higher costs, and physical risk of attack that come with transiting Hormuz, experts say.
The first is shipping more crude from its Gulf terminals through the Strait of Hormuz, including ship-to-ship transfers outside the strait, such as off Sohar in Oman,” according to Rishi Rajanala, research specialist in Oil Americas at LSEG Data & Analytics. The third is a phased restart of the pipeline itself, depending on the extent of the damage.” Richard Matthews, director of consultancy and research at Gibson Shipbrokers, a London-based shipping services company, said transiting back through Hormuz will “further fuel higher freight costs for Middle East exports and create additional inefficiencies”, adding, “we do not know how long Yanbu loadings will be suspended for, but it doesn’t look to be a quick fix.” One way to reduce that risk is for tankers to go “dark” by switching off their AIS transponders – used in maritime navigation to identify and track vessels – as they transit Omani coastal waters. If the outage extends beyond a few weeks, the balance shifts further: Stored volumes would run down, and any crude that cannot move through the Gulf would have to be stored or left unproduced, adding pressure to production levels already well below pre-war volumes in August.
Rahul Choudhary, vice president of Upstream Research at Rystad Energy, an independent energy research company, said Hormuz-route exports increased in September to more than two million bpd in the first two weeks, roughly one million bpd above August. Saudi Arabia can lean further on dark tanker activity in the coming days to offset Yanbu losses,” he added. Most of Saudi Arabia’s crude is produced in the east, and Aramco’s East-West pipeline links the Ghawar and Abqaiq processing facilities there to Yanbu port on the opposite side of the country.
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