Tankers Are Loading Oil Again From a Vital Saudi Pipeline

Tankers in the Red Sea have begun loading oil from a critical Saudi Arabian pipeline that was shut down this month after it was damaged in an attack.A total of nine tankers on the Red Sea coast have loaded about 12.5 million barrels of crude since Sunday, according to satellite imagery analyzed by Kpler, a maritime data firm.Three of those tankers were loaded in just the previous 24 hours, the strongest indication yet that the East-West pipeline, a 750-mile network that transports crude across Saudi Arabia, was at least partly working again.

The Saudi authorities said on Sept.11 that they had taken the pipeline offline, blaming a drone attack by an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia.“The pipeline has resumed,” said Amena Bakr, head of Middle East & OPEC+ Insights at Kpler.

Neither Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry nor Saudi Aramco, the state oil giant, has made any public statement on the pipeline since it was attacked, and each declined to comment on the resumption of operations.An extended closure of the East-West pipeline threatened to drastically reduce how much oil Saudi Arabia, the region’s largest oil exporter, could get out of the region.The pipeline became the Saudis’ main workaround when the war in Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz seven months ago.To get oil from Red Sea ports to global markets, tankers must transport it through the Bab al-Mandab Strait on the southern end of the Red Sea or the Suez Canal and a pipeline across Egypt at the northern end of the sea.

The Bab al-Mandab Strait, largely controlled by the Iranian-backed Houthi militia, can be perilous to navigate.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Sub...