Saudi Arabia has resumed overseas crude shipments via the East-West Pipeline, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing a person with direct knowledge, ending a 17-day export halt from the Red Sea port of Yanbu that had left some European customers facing zero allocations under term contracts next month.
Saudi Aramco, the state oil giant whose entire export infrastructure was upended by the US-Iran war, is the most direct equity expression of the pipeline’s restoration — yet shares slipped 0.77% to 25.62 SAR in Monday’s Saudi session, per Investing.com data, suggesting the market had already partially priced in the recovery.
The Petroline, a 1,200-km artery linking the Eastern Province oilfields to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, had been handling roughly 4 million barrels per day — equivalent to approximately 4% of global supply, after Riyadh rerouted exports there when the US-Iran war disrupted Strait of Hormuz flows beginning in March 2026. Drone strikes on September 11, attributed by Riyadh to Iraqi militia, damaged three pumping stations and forced a full shutdown. Reuters reported on September 22, citing three sources, that operations had restarted at a low pumping rate; as of September 24, Reuters reported tanker loading at Yanbu had not yet resumed, with Aramco telling European refiners it was still building a “critical mass” of volumes. Bloomberg’s Monday report indicates overseas shipments have now begun.
The resumption provides relief but not a clean fix. Full capacity restoration, based on estimates from late September, could still take six to eight weeks, meaning the pipeline’s theoretical 7 million bpd nameplate capacity remains out of reach for now. The current operating rate has not been publicly disclosed, and Saudi Aramco and the Saudi energy ministry did not immediately respond to Bloomberg’s requests for comment.
The supply disruption has run parallel with a Saudi push to compensate through the Strait of Hormuz. CNBC reported on September 25 that Saudi crude exports via Hormuz tracked at 3.6 million bpd in September, up sharply from around 900,000 bpd in August, based on Kpler data. Matt Smith, director of commodity research at Kpler, told CNBC: “The ramp-up from the Mideast Gulf is a consequence of the pipeline outage, but it likely also signals a greater confidence in using the Strait of Hormuz given rising traffic.” US Energy Secretary Chris Wright added context on September 27, telling Iran International that on one recent day “over 20 million barrels of oil, more than pre-conflict levels, flowed out of the strait,” with the current average running at almost 13 million barrels a day.
Crude was up 3.76% at $95.88 per barrel as of pre-market trade Monday, per Investing.com data, having touched a session high of $96.53 — approaching the $95.60–$97.73 resistance zone that technical analysts have flagged.
Source: Investing.com
