Drones from Iraq shut Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, its main way around the closed Strait of Hormuz. Will crude flow again by Sept 20?
56% of users predicted YES — the community missed this one. 16 predictions cast.
Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, known as Petroline, remained shut through September 20, 2026, after drone strikes launched from Iraqi territory hit multiple pumping stations on September 10-11 amid the wider Iran war. The attack forced Saudi Arabia to take the roughly 1,200-kilometer line offline as a precaution. The pipeline is the kingdom's main route for moving crude to the Red Sea port of Yanbu without transiting the closed Strait of Hormuz.
No crude loaded from Yanbu after September 11, and terminal inventories held only three to five days of supply at normal rates. Saudi Aramco began building a bypass around the damaged pumping stations, but repair estimates ran four to six weeks, well past the question's September 20 deadline. The outage removed an estimated 4 million to 5 million barrels per day of alternative export capacity and contributed to oil prices breaking above $100 a barrel for the first time in months.
A majority of the community, 56%, had expected flows to resume by September 20. The scale of the pumping-station damage and the bypass construction timeline instead kept the pipeline offline well beyond that date.