Saudi Arabia holds enough crude to keep exporting from the Red Sea port of Yanbu for only five to seven days unless it can soon restart its main pipeline, shut since Friday (11) after drone attacks. The estimate comes from Saudi oil buyers and traders who spoke to Reuters on Sunday (13), in a report carried by G1, the news portal of Brazil's Globo group. The East-West line crosses the Arabian Peninsula and moves about 4 million barrels a day, around 4% of world supply, from eastern oil fields to the Red Sea.

Yanbu can store about 35 million barrels, according to industry estimates cited by Reuters. The kingdom also keeps stocks at the Egyptian ports of Ain Sukhna on the Red Sea, with room for 18 million barrels, and Sidi Kerir on the Mediterranean, with 20 million. Four industry sources told the agency the tanks are not full and will run dry if the pipeline stays down. Saudi Arabia's government media office and its energy ministry did not respond to requests for comment, and Riyadh has not detailed the damage or a timeline for restart.

The chokepoints of a war

For the past six months the pipeline has been the kingdom's escape route: with the Strait of Hormuz closed by the war between the United States and Iran, a conflict described by CNN Brasil, the line spared Saudi Arabia the export freeze that hit its neighbors. Regional flows through Hormuz, about 22 million barrels a day for the whole Middle East before the war, have fallen to between 6 million and 9 million, industry sources said. On Friday (11), Iran-aligned Houthi fighters from Yemen took Perim island at the mouth of the Red Sea, a day after seizing the port city of Mocha, CNN Brasil reported. Perim divides the Bab el-Mandeb strait, the gateway to the Suez Canal shipping route.

Production figures already show the squeeze. Saudi Arabia told OPEC, the producers' cartel, that it pumped 6.2 million barrels a day in August, down from 10.9 million in February, before the war began. The International Energy Agency (IEA), which coordinates Western energy policy, said on Friday (11) that Saudi supply fell in August to its lowest level in more than three decades and that world supply will drop by 5.7 million barrels a day this year, about 6%.

Repairs and diplomacy

Estimates on the pipeline diverge. One Reuters source said repairs could take five to six weeks; another said the problem may be fixed sooner, with pumping partly resumed while work continues. On the military front, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman called US President Donald Trump twice on Thursday (10) to ask for strikes against the Houthis, and Trump declined, a source told CNN Brasil. The White House said in a statement:

"The United States is focused on protecting our core national security interests, such as ensuring freedom of navigation in the Red Sea, while empowering our regional partners to take the lead in managing and resolving regional security challenges."

Another drop in Saudi flows would deepen a shortage that has already pushed fuel prices to record levels, fueled inflation worldwide and lifted US Treasury yields to their highest since the 2008 financial crisis, according to the G1 report. For global buyers, the clock that matters now is the one on Yanbu's tanks: five to seven days at most before the world's largest oil exporter has to fall back on the smaller stocks it keeps in Egypt.