Saudi pipeline restored

Saudi Arabia said on April 12 that it had restored the East-West oil pipeline to its full pumping capacity of about 7 million barrels a day. (spa.gov.sa) The kingdom’s Energy Ministry said the recovery followed attacks disclosed on April 9 that had cut throughput on the line by about 700,000 barrels a day. The same April 9 statement said damage at the Manifa and Khurais fields had reduced production by a combined 600,000 barrels a day. (spa.gov.sa) The pipeline carries crude from Saudi Arabia’s Gulf-side oil system across the kingdom to Yanbu on the Red Sea, giving exporters a route that does not require tankers to sail through the Strait of Hormuz. Reuters reported on April 12 that the line had become Saudi Arabia’s only crude export route during the strait’s closure. (reuters.com) The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow shipping lane between Iran and Oman that the International Energy Agency said carried an average 20 million barrels a day of crude oil and oil products in 2025. At its narrowest point, the waterway is 29 nautical miles wide, with 2-mile-wide shipping channels in each direction. (iea.org) The U.S. Energy Information Administration said crude and condensate flows through Hormuz had already fallen between 2022 and 2024, but the strait still remained one of the world’s most important oil chokepoints. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran and the United Arab Emirates all rely on it for a large share of seaborne exports. (eia.gov) Saudi Arabia built the East-West line, also known as the Petroline, in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War to keep exports moving if Gulf shipping came under attack. The line runs about 1,200 kilometers from the Eastern Province to Yanbu. (britannica.com, wikipedia.org) The April 12 Saudi statement said Manifa’s lost 300,000 barrels a day had also been recovered, while work at Khurais was still continuing. Bloomberg reported on April 9 that Yanbu can export about 5 million barrels a day, below the pipeline’s 7 million-barrel pumping capacity. (spa.gov.sa, bloomberg.com) For oil buyers, the immediate change is simple: Saudi crude can again move west to the Red Sea at full pipeline capacity, even while the Gulf route remains exposed. The next test is whether repairs at Khurais and shipping conditions around Hormuz stabilize enough to ease the wider supply strain. (spa.gov.sa, iea.org)