By Ahmed Elimam | Updated on Oct 06, 2026 at 10:39 AM
Saudi Arabia is pumping 5.8 million barrels a day through its key cross-country pipeline, Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said.
The kingdom was sending those volumes through the East West pipeline as of Tuesday morning, the minister said at an event in Bahrain. It was able to start using the link again five to six days after the “big hit” on the pipeline, he said. The link was shut Sept. 10 following attacks by drones launched from Iraq.
State-run Saudi Aramco had ramped up flows through the pipeline to close to 6 million barrels a day, or over 80% of capacity, a person familiar with the matter said late last week. About 4.5 million of that was available for exports through the kingdom’s western port of Yanbu on the Red Sea coast, the person said.
The strike halted a vital conduit that had kept oil flowing during the Iran war without relying on perilous journeys via the Strait of Hormuz. Those supplies had become a lifeline for the market, helping prevent oil prices from surging even further.
That route, however, has come under pressure in recent months with Yemen’s Houthi militants attacking tankers and Saudi infrastructure along the kingdom’s west coast. The shutdown of the East-West pipeline had forced Saudi Arabia to pivot its oil exports back toward Hormuz. Those shipments, and the returning supplies through Yanbu, drove up the kingdom’s total exports last month to the highest since January.