Saudi Arabia Restarts Red Sea Crude Oil Loadings

Saudi Arabia has restarted crude oil loadings at the Yanbu port on the Red Sea after the East-West pipeline resumed partial service, Reuters reported on Tuesday, citing vessel-tracking data and trade sources.

Saudi Arabia shut down the East-West onshore pipeline for two weeks following drone attacks that damaged pumping stations on September 10. The pipeline that helps the Kingdom bypass the Strait of Hormuz resumed partial service last Thursday, but full resumption of flows of about 4 million barrels per day (bpd) would likely take weeks.

Still, the Yanbu port and the Al Muajjiz terminal south of Yanbu are back to loading crude oil cargoes, easing the supply crunch in the Middle East.

Crude oil loadings at Yanbu have been around 2 million bpd since last week, according to separate estimates by two trade sources shared with Reuters.

Aramco, the Saudi state oil giant, notified customers late on Monday what the loading schedule at Yanbu would look like in October, a source at an Asian refiner told Reuters.

Satellite imagery captured over the Red Sea on Sunday shows Saudi Arabia loading nearly 10 million barrels of crude oil at Yanbu and Al Muajjiz, TankerTrackers.com said on Monday.

“In total, we visually identified 40 tankers, regardless of their activity or proximity to these terminals,” the vessel-tracking firm said in an X post.

Resumption of the Yanbu loadings and shipments of Saudi crude outside the Strait of Hormuz is set to increase global oil supply, save for heightened Houthi threats to Saudi tankers in the Red Sea.

So far in September, crude oil exports from the Middle East are estimated to have rebounded to about 12.8 million bpd, Kpler has estimated, as Saudi Arabia has redirected oil flows from the west to the east after the pipeline outage. Aramco has been loading crude on tankers in the Gulf of Oman via ship-to-ship transfers.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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