Saudi Arabia Restarts East-West Pipeline After Two-Week Shutdown; Brent Slides Below $100 for First Time in Weeks

Saudi Arabia restarted its East-West Pipeline on Sep 22, roughly two weeks after the Sep 10-11 drone-attack wave forced its shutdown and the subsequent Sep 15 suspension of Yanbu Red Sea loadings. The 1,200km line -- which normally carries about 4 million bpd, some 4% of global supply, from the Gulf coast to the Red Sea -- resumed pumping at a reduced rate, with Aramco working to restore flows toward pre-attack levels; a security source cautioned full commercial resumption could still take weeks, and one cargo was scheduled to load at Yanbu for China. Over the preceding weekend, seven supertankers with a combined 14 million barrels loaded from Gulf terminals for shipment via the Strait of Hormuz itself, a stopgap that had kept some volume moving during the outage. The restart triggered an immediate market reaction: Brent crude, which closed at $101.61 on Sep 21, opened near $99.27 by 6am ET and fell further through the session toward $97.81-98 -- its first sustained drop below $100 in weeks -- while WTI briefly dipped below $92 before paring losses. 'This surge in Gulf loadings helped push Brent crude below $100 per barrel for the first time in recent weeks,' said Noureldeen Al Hammoury, chief market strategist at Equiti Group.