Houthis Claim Drone Attacks on East-West Pipeline Pumping Stations

SEATTLE (Oil Monster): Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree claimed on Monday that the group launched drone attacks against crude oil pumping stations along Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline — the 1,200-kilometre overland route that has become the kingdom’s primary export artery since Iran’s partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia has issued no confirmation of damage to any oil infrastructure.

The claim, reported by Reuters, marks the second time in 48 hours that Saree has named the pipeline as a target. On Saturday, he listed pumping stations, the Rabigh refinery, and an Aramco facility at Yanbu among targets of a broader Houthi operation — again without Saudi confirmation of any oil damage. If the pumping stations were struck, Saudi Arabia would face the prospect of losing its only high-volume export route not already throttled by the Hormuz confrontation, at a time when tanker transits through the strait fell in September to roughly 44 percent of prewar levels according to Kpler shipping data.

What Did Saree Claim on October 26?

Saree’s Monday statement, reported by Reuters via Yahoo Finance, claimed drone attacks on crude oil pumping stations along the East-West Pipeline and a ballistic missile strike on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh. He provided no individual station names or numbers and showed no evidence of damage.

The Saudi-led coalition responded to part of the claim, confirming it intercepted a ballistic missile fired toward Riyadh and destroyed two ballistic missile launchers in Sanaa, according to Reuters. On the pipeline — the claim that matters most for global oil supply — the coalition said nothing.

That pattern of selective confirmation is now established. On Saturday October 24, Saree claimed a broader operation targeting the Rabigh refinery, an Aramco facility in Yanbu, crude oil pumping stations, the East-West Pipeline, and four airports — KKIA, King Fahd International Airport in Dammam, Najran, and Khamis Mushait air base, as reported by ABC Australia. Saudi Arabia confirmed no damage to any oil facility from that wave either.

The coalition has been willing to confirm missile intercepts over the past month and has done so repeatedly. But it has not confirmed or denied damage to any energy infrastructure since the September pipeline shutdown, leaving Aramco’s actual operational status opaque to the market, to insurers, and to the Houthis themselves. What the Houthis are targeting — and what they may be hitting — are the stations that keep the crude moving.

The September Precedent

The last confirmed attack on the pipeline’s pumping stations offers a template for what a successful strike costs. On September 10, drones hit pipeline infrastructure in the Riyadh and Medina regions, and Saudi Arabia shut the entire line the next day as a “precautionary measure,” the Ministry of Energy said, according to Saudi Gazette via Zawya.

Reuters, citing three unnamed oil and security sources, identified Pump Stations 8 and 9 as the ones damaged — though Aramco has never confirmed which stations were hit, as reported by the Engineering News-Record on September 17. Satellite analysis by the Payne Institute at the Colorado School of Mines found a pumping station complex at al-Mesabaah, southeast of Medina, that burned for at least 13 hours, with eight distinct thermal clusters and a burn scar of approximately 30 acres, according to ENR and Al Jazeera.

The pipeline restarted on September 22 — eleven days after the shutdown — but full capacity was estimated to take six to eight weeks to restore, Reuters reported via Baird Maritime. On October 6, nearly a month after the attack, Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told the GCC Forum in Manama that the line had still not returned to its design capacity of 7 million barrels per day, according to Aramco. Saudi crude output had already fallen from roughly 9.5 million barrels per day before the conflict to about 8 million by September, according to IEA data cited by Fortune.

Aramco CEO Amin Nasser said in September that disruptions typically last “days, not weeks or months,” according to Saudi Gazette via Zawya. The September shutdown lasted eleven days, and the capacity shortfall persisted for at least 26. If the October 26 claim reflects another successful strike on the stations, the recovery clock starts again — this time from a baseline that was already well short of full capacity.

Courtesy: www.houseofsaud.com