BREAKING: Saudi Arabia has Shut down its critical East-West oil pipeline after multiple attacks damaged the pipeline.
This is Saudi Arabia’s strategic lifeline around the Strait of Hormuz - capable of moving 7 million barrels of crude per day from its eastern oil fields to the Red Sea.
The 1,200 km pipeline was built during the Iran-Iraq war specifically to keep Saudi oil flowing if Hormuz became unusable.
Saudi Arabia had already rerouted millions of barrels per day through this system because of the Hormuz disruption.
Now that backup route has been knocked offline.
Saudi Arabia announces a full shutdown of its East-West crude oil pipeline, which was attacked in multiple locations across the Riyadh and Madinah regions on Thursday morning, with the damage being addressed, per the Ministry of Energy.
🇸🇦 BREAKING: Saudi Arabia shuts down a crucial oil pipeline with a capacity of up to 7 MILLION barrels per day after multiple drone attacks from Iraq.
The 750-mile East-West pipeline carries crude from Saudi Arabia's Persian Gulf coast to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, bypassing the Strait of Hormuz.
Saudi crude production has already fallen to 6 MILLION barrels per day in August, down from 9.4 MILLION last year, the lowest in over 30 years.
The kingdom's GDP contracted 4.7% year over year in Q2, while its first-half budget deficit reached $42.7 BILLION, per the WSJ.
BREAKING: Saudi Arabia announces a full shutdown of its East-West crude oil pipeline, which was attacked in multiple locations across the Riyadh and Madinah regions on Thursday morning, with the damage being addressed, per the Ministry of Energy.
This comes as initial reports from diplomatic channels say the pipeline has suffered catastrophic damage in at least 8 locations, after satellite data showed a fire burning along the pipeline route southeast of Medina with a black smoke plume now 115 km long.
The pipeline, the kingdom's only export route that does not pass through the Strait of Hormuz, has a capacity of 7 million barrels per day. Nothing is now moving through it.