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Business

Saudi Arabia resumes Yanbu oil loading after East-West Pipeline restart

Saudi Arabia has resumed crude loadings from its Red Sea port of Yanbu after restarting the East-West Pipeline, easing pressure on Middle East oil exports throttled by the US-Iran war.

By Priya Raman · · 2 min read

Saudi Arabia has resumed oil loadings from its Red Sea port of Yanbu after restarting operations on the East-West Pipeline, according to trade sources and shipping data, improving the outlook for oil exports from the Middle East.

Drone attacks, which Saudi Arabia blamed on Iraqi militias, forced the kingdom to shut the pipeline on 11 September, halting crude exports from Yanbu. Pipeline operations resumed on 22 September.

State oil giant Saudi Aramco notified customers on the evening of 28 September of its October loading schedule from Yanbu, an Asian refining source said. The refiner loaded a cargo from Yanbu late last week. Aramco did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Two trade sources separately estimated crude loadings from Yanbu at about 2 million barrels per day since last week. Ship-tracking firm Kpler estimates current throughput on the pipeline at around 2.65 million bpd and expects it to climb to between 3 million and 4 million bpd in the coming days. A full return to the pre-attack rate of roughly 5.5 million bpd could still take another month, it said in a note on 28 September. Kpler added that crude inventories at the Yanbu terminal rose by roughly 1 million barrels on 22 September, the first build since the attack.

Vessel-tracking firm TankerTrackers.com said ESA satellite imagery captured over the Red Sea on 27 September showed Saudi Arabia loading nearly 10 million barrels of crude oil at Yanbu and Al Muajjiz, a terminal south of Yanbu. “We also observed refined-product loadings. In total, we visually identified 40 tankers,” the firm wrote in a post on X.

The resumption of loading at Yanbu is set to bolster crude exports from the Middle East, where the US war with Iran has throttled shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for one-fifth of the world’s oil supply before the conflict.

Sources

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