The ramp up in Saudi Arabia’s Hormuz-bypassing East-West pipeline has been nothing short of remarkable.
Two days after we reported that flow through the pipeline which crosses Saudi Arabia east to west for oil flows (hence the name) and is also known as the Abqaiq-Yanbu pipeline for nat gas flows had doubled from roughly 1.5 million before the war, today Bloomberg updates on the latest flow numbers and it now appears that the crucial East-West pipeline is pumping oil at its full capacity of 7 million barrels a day.
Crude exports via Yanbu have now reached about 5 million barrels a day and the kingdom is also exporting 700,000 to 900,000 barrels a day of refined products, according to the Bloomberg source familiar with the Saudi oil industry. Of the 7 million barrels a day that go through the pipeline, 2 million are destined for Saudi refineries.
This remarkable achievement, which many experts predicted would take weeks longer to achieve, is the culmination of the kingdom’s longstanding contingency plan for keeping its oil flowing after the effective closure of their main export route. Meanwhile, the Red Sea next to the Saudi port terminal of Yanbu is becoming a bit of a tanker parking lot as flotillas of tankers patiently await to collect the oil, providing an important lifeline for global supply.
As reported previously, Saudi Arabia has been preparing for decades for the worst-case scenario of Hormuz closing. It put its contingency plan to work within hours of the first US and Israeli strikes on Iran, and has been ramping up east-west shipments ever since. Running the breadth of the Arabian Peninsula from the massive oil fields in the east of the country to the industrial port city of Yanbu, the pipeline is more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) long. It’s a by-product of a previous conflict – the 1980s Iran-Iraq war – which saw attacks on ships in the Strait, but nothing like the unprecedented near-closure the current conflict has caused.
Despite the record flow, the Yanbu route still only partly offsets the hit to supply from shutting Hormuz, through which about 15 million barrels a day of crude shipments passed before the war. But the bypass is one reason oil prices haven’t reached the crisis-level highs of previous supply shocks.
However, with Yemen’s Houthis now saying they are entering the war, the concern for oil markets will be that the Red Sea becomes a new front in the conflict. While the Houthis have not given any indication they would attack tankers going through the Red Sea and Bab El-Mandeb strait, they have previously threatened shipping in the area with drones and missiles.
UAE’s Fujairah Nears Capacity
It’s not just Saudi Arabia that has been ramping up its options to bypass the Strait: the United Arab Emirates has also maxed out oil exports from a vital port that lies outside the Strait of Hormuz, after some of the biggest crude loading infrastructure resumed operations following Iranian drone strikes earlier this month.
The largest crude operations by Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) in Fujairah are picking up after they had halted March 14. The port in the UAE’s east coast has a critical role as an outlet for oil bypassing the all-but shut Hormuz waterway, making it among the energy sites most frequently targeted by Tehran. After Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea port of Yanbu, it’s the biggest exit point for Persian Gulf crude circumventing the maritime chokepoint.
As Bloomberg reports, the return of much of Adnoc’s operations helped push up crude loading to about 1.9 million barrels a day over the March 20-24 period. That’s up 57% from the average flows of about 1.21 million barrels a day over the past year, as the UAE pushes to get more cargoes out through the route with Hormuz still mostly blocked.
The latest crude oil export figures suggest a 252-mile (406-kilometer) Adnoc-owned pipeline – linking Habshan, the collection point for Abu Dhabi’s onshore fields, to the port – is operating close to its capacity.
The uptick compares with an average of 1.48 million barrels a day for the month through March 24. More recent exports still need to be verified as electronic jamming is widely blocking the transmission of satellite signals that allow tracking in the region.
Fujairah’s proximity to Iran – it’s about 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Hormuz, nestled in the shadow of the Al Hajar mountains – makes it more vulnerable than Yanbu. Over the past four weeks, Tehran has attacked Fujairah at least seven times, destroying storage tanks and causing fires in a petrochemicals complex.
Besides crude oil, Fujairah also has large fuel-loading operations. Part of that system is still out of commission, after a key manifold was damaged in a strike more than three weeks ago. Most fuel is currently being loaded via an older section of the port, which connects directly to the ship berths without going via the manifold, according to people with knowledge of the situation. Refineries, including one run by a unit of Vitol Group, are still halted.
Fujairah — which became a refueling port for tankers during the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, before the construction of storage tanks at the turn of the century — exported its first crude in 2012.
“It took foresight to build a pipeline that bypasses the strait and was an effort to reduce dependence on a single chokepoint,” said Ben Cahill, director for energy markets and policy at the University of Texas at Austin’s center for energy. “At this point, every barrel matters.”
Still, Iranian attacks have deterred some shippers from calling at Fujairah, while loading systems and storage tanks — especially at the port’s product terminals — have been damaged. More importantly, those initial strikes damaged systems in the port, known as the Matrix Manifolds, which manage the flow of oil from each of the tank farms. Refined products are pumped through a complex web of piping arriving at a single point where the flows are then directed to any of more than a dozen ship berths.
A tank farm run by companies including Royal Vopak of the Netherlands and Dubai’s Emirates National Oil Co. halted loadings when the initial strikes crippled the manifolds, according to the people who asked not to be identified discussing operational issues. Loading from the Vopak Horizon terminal restarted late this week, according to a March 26 report from Inchchape Shipping Services.
Now Fujairah is working to restore full export capacity for refined products from a vast network of storage tanks that can store up to 70 million barrels. Fujairah has also developed into one of the top three ports for bunker fuel — the propellant used by ships — although the effective closure of Hormuz has curbed demand.
According to Bloomberg, traders took a net 404,000 barrels of fuel out of Fujairah’s tanks in the week through March 23, representing a 2.8% decline in stocks, according to data from the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone and compiled by Platts, a unit of S&P Global Inc. While some terminal operators are trying to empty their tanks to reduce fire risks, others have been reluctant to load for fear that would make them a target, according to people familiar with the operations.
Finally, taking a look at the Hormuz closure, which remains Iran’s only remaining Trump card and which Tehran has now played, increasingly more ships are now crossing: in addition to China and India, traditionally the biggest export clients of gulf oil, Japan has also reportedly reached a deal with Iran to be allowed passage. This morning, Thailand Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul said his country had negotiated an agreement with Iran to allow the safe passage of Thai oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.
Anutin said the agreement would ease some concerns about Thailand’s oil supply. The Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs said this week it had successfully secured the passage through the strait of a tanker owned by the Bangchak Corporation, a Thai energy conglomerate. Earlier this month Iran said its forces fired on a Thai-flagged cargo ship, Mayuree Naree, which caught fire north of Oman after being hit by an unknown projectile. Three crew members went missing and another 20 were rescued.
Also on Saturday morning, ship tracking services reported that two LPG tankers and two bulk carriers exited the Gulf, with all four ships following a northern route that passes through the narrow gap between the two Iranian islands of Larak and Qeshm which many speculate the US will seek to take over with a marine invasion due to their critical importance in halting strait traffic.
Two LPG tankers and two bulk carriers exited the Gulf on Saturday morning. All four ships followed a northerly route that passes through a narrow gap between the two Iranian islands of Larak and Qeshm: BBG pic.twitter.com/wuNzRxLvFJ
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) March 28, 2026