Saudi Arabia shuts critical oil pipeline after drone attack: What it means

Saudi Arabia has temporarily closed its critical East-West oil pipeline, a 1,200km (746-mile) conduit stretching across the Arabian Peninsula, after it was attacked by drones on Friday.

The drones were reported to have been launched from Iraq, where an investigation is under way. No group has claimed responsibility for the strikes so far.

Plumes of smoke from a section of the pipeline could be seen on video footage from the area. It is understood that equipment used to operate the pipeline was also hit.

The closure of the pipeline has halted the flow of Saudi oil exports, which have also been disrupted by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz since March. A critical artery for the kingdom’s energy exports, it has become all the more important due to the US-Israel war on Iran.

The closure of its pipeline comes as Saudi Arabia is drawn into a new front in the Middle East conflict in Yemen, where Houthi forces have made rapid advances along the coast against the Saudi-backed Yemeni government and seized the strategic island of Mayun in the Bab al-Mandeb strait.

Here’s what we know about the closure of Saudi’s East-West pipeline and what it means for global energy security:

What has Saudi Arabia announced?

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday said the East-West oil pipeline, which crosses the country from Saudi’s Abqaiq oilfield in the east to the Yanbu port on the Red Sea in the west, had been hit in the Riyadh and Medina areas by drones, causing injuries and damage.

The pipeline, which is operated by the majority state-owned Saudi Aramco, has been temporarily shut as a “precaution”, according to the country’s Ministry of Energy. Specialised teams have begun steps to “secure the pipeline and assess its safety”, the ministry said.

Where did the drone attack come from and who launched it?

The attack originated in the southeastern Iraqi province of Maysan, according to the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, and neither Saudi Arabia nor the Iraqi government have publicly identified a group they suspect of being behind it.

Iraq is home to numerous Iran-backed armed groups, however.

Wolfgang Pusztai, a security policy and defence analyst, told Al Jazeera that the drone strikes on Saudi Arabia’s oil pipeline had most likely been carried out by one of these groups.

“I believe this [attack] was most likely an order from Tehran. From Tehran’s point of view, this is them supporting Yemen’s Houthi war objective, which is for Saudi Arabia to withdraw from Yemen,” he said.

Iran-backed groups are calculating that the more pressure Saudi Arabia feels from attacks on its territory, the more likely it is to withdraw from Yemen, where the Houthi rebels fighting the internationally recognised government are backed by Iran, said Pusztai.

“On the other side, this certainly sharpens Iran’s own blockade over the Strait of Hormuz because Tehran does not allow Saudi Arabia to bypass the Strait of Hormuz any more. This signals to Saudi Arabia – and probably to the other Gulf states – that Iran can’t be trusted.”

How has Iraq responded?

The Iraqi government formally condemned the attack, saying it does not accept its territory being used as a “launchpad for attacks against any nation” and that it would take “legal action against anyone proven to be involved”.

Iraq’s prime minister has ordered a probe into the Maysan operations command, which oversees security in the province Baghdad says the attack came from, and has dismissed its commander.

Iraq has also ordered the closure of the Shalamcheh border crossing between Iraq and Iran as a precautionary measure, two security sources told Reuters on Saturday.

Will Saudi Arabia respond?

So far, Saudi Arabia has opted not to retaliate. In a statement, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it would hold off on responding “at this stage” at the request of the Iraqi prime minister.

However, Riyadh said it reserves the right to “take ⁠all measures necessary” to protect its interests.

In July, the United States and Saudi Arabia launched joint attacks on the Iran-backed Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) in Iraq, killing at least 20 members of the group, after Saudi Arabia claimed it launched drone attacks on its oil facilities.

Iraq’s National Security Council, chaired by Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi, called the attacks on the PMF bases in seven Iraqi provinces “a flagrant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty and the sanctity of its lands”.

Abdulaziz Alghashian, a senior nonresident fellow at the Gulf International Forum think tank, said Saudi Arabia, which recently signed a defence pact with Turkiye and Pakistan, is likely to eventually retaliate, possibly in coordination with other regional allies.

Alghashian told Al Jazeera that he would not expect much from the Saudi-Turkiye-Pakistan Mecca defence pact announced in August, for now, as it is “still under construction”, but that there could still be some form of “multilateral response”.

“I think we’re going to see more escalation in the region and more military confrontation,” said Alghashian. “The question is just the extent of it”.

How significant is the closure of this pipeline?

Extremely.

The East-West pipeline has ⁠been moving four million to five million barrels of oil per day (bpd) in recent months, amounting to 4 to 5 percent of global supply, according to data cited by Reuters. It had increased capacity specifically to help mitigate the disruption to Saudi oil exports in the Strait of Hormuz.

While oil exports remain far below normal in the conflict-hit Strait of Hormuz, the closure of the East-West pipeline is expected to create more pain for global energy, as US diesel prices hit an all-time high and Brent crude oil – the global benchmark – currently costs more than $104 per barrel, say analysts.

Before the US-Israeli war on Iran commenced on February 28, Brent crude was trading at about $72 per barrel. Early in the conflict, it hit a high of $119.

“This is a real blow,” Ben Cahill, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center, told Al Jazeera, referring to the pipeline as Saudi Arabia’s “principal bypass option to avoid the Strait of Hormuz”.

“The key buffers that got us through the last six months have basically been worn away,” he said.

Saudi political analyst Khalid Bartafi told Al Jazeera that the attacks on the pipeline could cause a crisis for the global community.

“It’s going to be very dire consequences because we are talking about five million barrels of oil for export disappearing from the market,” he said. “The next 48 will tell you whether this is going to remain some sort of contained incident or this is going to become yet another major regional escalation.”

He added: “This is not just our problem, it’s a global problem because if Iran could close both the Strait of Hormuz and Bab al-Mandeb the world will pay. The world community needs to do something.”

How quickly can the pipeline be reopened?

It is hard to tell.

After a pumping station on the same pipeline was struck in April, causing output to fall to 700,000bpd, Saudi Arabia announced it had been repaired and restored to full capacity just three days later.

However, Saudi Arabia has not provided details on the extent of the damage from the latest attack. Satellite images showed smoke emerging from an area of the pipeline south of Medina. NASA also detected unusual thermal activity in the area.

What other options does Saudi Arabia have for its oil exports?

None that can readily compensate for the loss of the pipeline.

With exports hugely restricted in the Strait of Hormuz, the East-West pipeline had served as Saudi Arabia’s main bypass route, bringing crude oil from eastern Saudi Arabia westward to the Red Sea port of Yanbu.

That means Saudi Arabia cannot simply redirect the same eastern crude to Yanbu while the pipeline is shut. Meanwhile, it can try to make greater use of existing stocks in the west, but the Houthis’ newfound control of Yemen’s Red Sea coast and Mayun island, also known as Perim island, in the Bab al-Mandeb strait could pose further challenges to getting that oil out – even if longer journeys around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope are viable.

As a result, Saudi Arabia will likely reroute more exports through Egypt via the Suez Canal or the Sumed pipeline, a 320km (199-mile) pipeline carrying crude oil from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea.

Cahill added that the closure of the East-West pipeline could have ripple effects across an already squeezed global energy market.

“There’s less slack in the system, everything is running hot,” said Cahill. If attacks continue and there is “any real threat that the Red Sea is going to be cut off for some time”, he added, it would mean further upward pressure on prices.