East–West Crude Oil Pipeline

And so Saudi Arabia, which is the world's largest oil exporter and a close ally of the United States, relied on sending exports via the Red Sea route, passing through the Bab el Mandeb Strait.

It did so by moving oil across the Arabian Peninsula from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea through the East-West Oil Pipeline, which runs about seven hundred and fifty miles or about twelve hundred kilometers across Saudi Arabia.

It can move about seven million barrels of crude oil per day and has been sending about five million a day since the outbreak of the war on Iran.

From there, oil can be loaded onto tankers and shipped down the Red Sea through the Bab el Mandeb and on to global markets.

Christoph Rohl is with Columbia's Center on Global Energy Policy.

He says Saudi Arabia's East-West Pipeline had helped blunt the impact from the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, but he predicted the effect of reduced supply would be much less than the energy crisis of the 1970s caused by the OPEC oil embargo and the Iranian revolution

The importance of oil has dramatically declined.

That means we need less and less oil to keep the global economy going.

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Iraq has confirmed that drone attacks on Saudi Arabia's East-West Pipeline were launched from its territory.

Baghdad condemned the attacks, vowed to investigate further, and asked Saudi Arabia to refrain from retaliating.

The attacks prompted Riyadh to close down the oil pipeline after it sustained serious damage.

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Iraq has confirmed that drone attacks on Saudi Arabia's East-West Pipeline were launched from its territory.

Baghdad condemned the attacks, vowed to investigate further, and asked Saudi Arabia to refrain from retaliating.

The attacks prompted Riyadh to close down the oil pipeline after it sustained serious damage.

It's called the Bab el-Mandeb Straits, and Saudi Arabia relies on it a lot.

So all Saudi Arabia had left was one single pipeline, the East-West pipeline, then an Iranian proxy struck that as well.

So they have essentially taken one of the US allies in this war, Saudi Arabia, and Iran and their proxies have cut them off, have stopped the oil flow.

It's gonna spike gas prices.

Regional officials told the Associated Press that the Houthis helped the Iraqi militias plan and execute the attacks.

Built in the 1980s, the East-West Pipeline has played an important role in Saudi Arabia's ability to export oil following the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz during the Iran War.

By early June, Saudi Arabia had more than doubled oil exports from the Red Sea port at the pipeline's end to more than 5 million barrels per day, according to the International Energy Agency.

The Houthis' capture of Mayan, a tiny barren volcanic island inside the strait, also known as Parham, was confirmed by a senior military official with Yemen's internationally recognized government and by a Houthi official.

And unfortunately, it is working.

We must ask, whose interests does this strategy serve? Is it Iran alone, or is it Russia too? And are those who benefit from it most likely also complicit in planning this assault upon Saudi and American credibility and strength in the Middle East? So what happened? Saudi Arabia's Ministry of Energy said on Friday that the East-West pipeline was targeted in several drone attacks across the Riyadh and Madinah regions on Thursday morning, that people were injured and treated and that the line was shut down as a precaution while technical teams assessed it.

the saudi foreign ministry then said something far more interesting it said the drones came from iraq not iran that is iran's militia network however in the mysan province and baghdad has effectively conceded the point the iraqi prime minister ali al zaidi sacked the maisan operations commander opened an investigation and iraqi security sources say that the shalam sheikh crossing to iran was closed Riyadh says it reserves, in its foreign ministry's words, all measures necessary to protect its sovereignty, security and facilities and then announced it would hold off anyway at Baghdad's request.

CNN, citing two U.S. officials, reports that pump stations alongside the line That's the pipeline was struck by projectiles with satellite imagery showing extensive fire damage at one station near Al-Mezbah and a fire at another near Al-Diakara.

The extent of damage to the pipelines also, or its pumping stations, or how long the shutdown was expected to last.

However, the East-West Pipeline's central role in Saudi Arabia's oil export system is like spine, particularly as shipping through the state of Hormuz has declined amid the current United States-Iran conflict.

It means that suspension carries implications beyond damage to a domestic energy facility.

The East-West Pipeline, also known as Petrol Line, is one of Saudi Arabia's most important crude oil transportation systems, operated by the state government.

energy company Aramco.

It stretches approximately 1,200 kilometers from Abkhag in the kingdom's eastern province to Yenbo on the Red Sea coast.