Saudi Aramco is working to bypass a damaged section of the kingdom’s critical East-West crude oil pipeline after several drone strikes from Iraq earlier this month, aiming to restore at least half of the system’s capacity in the coming days, Bloomberg reported on September 16.
Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Energy said in a statement that several attacks hit the pipeline in the Riyadh and Medina regions, prompting a precautionary shutdown.
Emergency and specialized technical teams were deployed to secure the pipeline and assess its safety, the ministry said, which also reported injuries but did not identify damaged facilities or provide a timetable for restarting.
Bloomberg reported, citing a person familiar with the work, that full capacity could return in about six weeks.
Separately, U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said during an interview with CNBC a day earlier that crude oil should be flowing through the pipeline again “within days,” while a Reuters source said repairs could take five to six weeks and another said partial pumping could resume sooner as repairs continue.
Satellite analysis found abnormal fire and flame activity approximately 68 miles from the corridor southeast of Medina. Researchers at the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines identified eight thermal clusters after the attacks, but found that most matched existing flare pits used for emergency burning rather than new pipe breaks.
Middle East Forum analysts separately identified seven new fire sites along the same 68-mile section. Based on commercial basemap imagery, they identified one site as a pumping station complex about 2,300 feet in diameter that burned for at least 13 hours. Later images indicated a burn scar of approximately 30 acres, although analysts said they could not determine which individual tanks or equipment were destroyed.
Looking for quick answers on construction and engineering topics?
Try Ask ENR, our new intelligent AI search tool.
Ask ENR →
Reuters reported on September 16, citing assessments from three oil and security sources, that pumping stations 8 and 9 were damaged. The 745-mile pipeline has 11 pumping stations and two separate pressure relief stations, according to industry assessments. Saudi Aramco has not responded to several media requests for comment, including from ENR.
Petroline was already running
Known as Petroline, the East-West system was transporting 4 to 5 million barrels a day before the shutdown, equivalent to about 4 percent to 5 percent of the world’s oil supply, according to Reuters.
ENR reported in March that the system uses a parallel 48-in. and 56 inches. pipelines between the Abqaiq oil processing complex in eastern Saudi Arabia and the Red Sea export facility at Yanbu. Gasoline could originally move about 5 million bpd.
Petroline stretches 745 miles across Saudi Arabia from the Abqaiq oil processing complex to Yanbu, providing a critical outlet from the Red Sea for crude oil passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Map by Getty Images/PeterHermesFurian
Aramco later converted parallel natural gas liquids lines to carry crude, increasing Petroline’s emergency capacity to about 7 million bpd.
In March, Aramco Chief Executive Amin Nasser said the company was ramping up the system to that level as tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz increased reliance on the land route. US Central Command said on September 16 that Hormuz “remains open to traffic” and that commercial traffic is increasing, although it remains well below pre-war levels.
ENR’s March analysis found that pipeline capacity was only one constraint. The two Yanbu export terminals have a combined nominal cargo capacity of about 4.5 million bpd, according to Argus Media, while market sources put their operational test capacity closer to 4 million bpd.
The pipeline’s exit from the Red Sea poses another limitation. S&P Global reported that Yemen’s Houthis declared a naval blockade on July 20 on ships sailing to and from Saudi ports. Since then, many tanker operators have avoided Saudi oil movements south through the Bab al-Mandab strait, directing cargo north through the Suez Canal. Egypt’s SuMed pipeline can carry up to 2.5 million bpd north from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean, according to S&P Global.
“Houthi gains around Mokha are unlikely to shut down Saudi or regional oil exports, but they will erode the resilience of Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea export route at a strategically important time,” Jack Kennedy, S&P Global Market Intelligence’s head of country risk in the Middle East and North Africa, said in a Sept. 11 analysis.
Aramco has not publicly detailed what equipment was damaged at Pump Stations 8 and 9 or how the reported bypass of the damaged section would be set up.
RELATED
It damaged the key Saudi gas pipeline in the latest blow to the region’s energy infrastructure
Petroline has recovered before the damage to the pump station. In April, ENR reported that an attack damaged a station and reduced capacity by about 700,000 barrels per day before pipeline flow was restored.
The same pumping stations 8 and 9 were also attacked in May 2019. Aramco said armed drones struck both facilities, causing a fire and what the company described as minor damage to station 8. The company temporarily shut down Petroline as a precaution, but said its oil and gas supplies were not affected.
Aramco and the Saudi Energy Ministry have not publicly confirmed the timeline for the restart to Bloomberg or disclosed how much capacity could return before permanent repairs are completed.
