Saudi East-West Oil Pipeline Expected to Remain Largely Offline for 3–5 Weeks

This is a new, forward-looking operational assessment that Saudi Arabia’s East-West oil pipeline could remain largely offline for 3–5 weeks after a drone attack, materially extending the previously reported outage risk. The pipeline can carry up to 7 million barrels per day to the Red Sea, so the expected multi-week disruption plausibly affects Saudi export capacity, alternative routing, and global oil supply. The development is best classified as an energy supply disruption rather than merely a security event. The underlying attack date is not provided beyond being described as occurring recently, so the occurrence timestamp uses the timestamp of the new duration assessment as the best available proxy; the status remains ongoing. Approved stakeholders are limited to Saudi-linked operators, Asian refiners with documented Gulf-crude exposure, and major tradable companies with a clear crude-price, refined-product, airline-fuel, or tanker-routing transmission channel; more speculative chemical, insurance, and secondary shipping exposures are excluded.