Saudi Aramco targets half East-West pipeline capacity within days - Bloomberg

Investing.com -- Saudi Aramco is working to bypass a damaged section of its 1,200-km East-West Pipeline and restore roughly half its capacity within days, with full restoration targeted in approximately six weeks, Bloomberg reported, citing a person familiar with the matter.

The pipeline had been carrying 4 to 5 million barrels per day before last week’s drone attacks forced its shutdown, according to Reuters — equivalent to 4% to 5% of global oil supply. The most direct market expression of the supply disruption remains Brent crude itself, where spot prices were trading near $105 Wednesday.

The East-West Pipeline became a critical artery for Saudi oil exports after the Strait of Hormuz was severely disrupted following the U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran that began on February 28, 2026. With that sea route largely closed, the pipeline represented Saudi Arabia’s primary path to move oil to Red Sea terminals at Yanbu and onto global markets. Its shutdown last Friday left traders estimating the kingdom had only five to seven days of export inventory at Yanbu before its ability to supply global markets would be critically curtailed.

Saudi Arabia attributed the attack to drones operated by Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. The Associated Press, cited by StreetInsider, reported separately that repairs to a major pumping facility could take three to five weeks, with partial operations possible during that window — a timeline broadly consistent with the Bloomberg account.

With the pipeline offline, Bloomberg reported separately on Wednesday that Saudi Arabia is ramping up prompt crude sales routed outside the Strait of Hormuz, pivoting to move oil through alternative channels. Whether that pivot can meaningfully offset the pipeline gap while repairs are underway remains an open question: the exact volume the bypass will carry has not been disclosed, and "about half capacity" implies somewhere in the range of 2 to 2.5 million barrels per day, based on the pipeline’s pre-attack throughput reported by Reuters.

A successful partial restart in the coming days would ease the most acute near-term supply risk and could weigh on a Brent price that has climbed sharply on the disruption.

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