Saudi Arabia’s Hormuz bypass is still down a week after the strikes, and the restart story keeps changing

The East-West Pipeline, which runs crude across the kingdom from the Eastern Province to Yanbu on the Red Sea and lets Saudi exports avoid the Strait of Hormuz, was hit by multiple attacks on the morning of 10 September in the Riyadh and Madinah regions and shut down “as a precaution,” according to a statement posted by the Saudi Ministry of Energy and quoted by Rigzone. The ministry did not name an attacker. A satellite image released by Vantor and distributed via Al Jazeera shows fire damage and extensive blackened areas in and around a pumping station on the route at al-Mesabaah, southeast of Medina, on 13 September. A claim circulating on prediction-market pages that the drones were launched from Iraqi territory on 10 and 11 September cites no source and no wire has stood it up; it is not reported here as fact.

On the restart there are three pictures. Bloomberg reported on 16 September that Riyadh is seeking to return about half the pipeline’s capacity within days, sourced to a single person familiar with the matter. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC on 15 September it would operate again “very soon” — named, but an American official characterising a Saudi decision. A separate CNBC piece the same day refers to the line pumping at a full capacity of 7 million barrels a day, in a passage that appears to describe the pre-attack state. Matt Smith, director of commodity research at Kpler, told CNBC the market could lose 120 million barrels if the pipeline stays shut for a month, assuming 4.5 million barrels a day through the line and 15 million barrels stored at Yanbu. Brent settled at $105.83 on 16 September, down 2.7% on the day but up more than 16% this month, per CNBC.

The convergence is the point. Hormuz was the Gulf states' main export corridor before the war; the 10 September strikes disabled the alternative to it. ABC News’s live blog for 16 September is headlined on a Houthi claim of new attacks on a Saudi oil facility and an air base — the body of that item was not retrievable, no facility was named in what we could read, and no Saudi response or damage assessment has been reported, so it stands today as a claim and nothing more. Kpler counts carried by Al Jazeera and RFE/RL in early September put Hormuz transits at 11 vessels on 1 September and 6 on 2 September. Daan Struyven, co-head of global commodities research at Goldman Sachs, told CNBC on 9 September that escalating attacks on shipping were raising the risk of oil above $120.

Assessment: Distrust every restart timeline this week, including the optimistic ones. “Half capacity within days,” “very soon” and a 7 million barrel-a-day line are not versions of the same sentence, and the only account that is specific comes from one unnamed person while the only named speaker is in Washington, not Dhahran. Riyadh’s silence on who fired is a choice: naming an attacker obliges a response. Note also that price tiles are unreliable right now — live trackers were showing figures irreconcilable with CNBC’s 16 September settle. The number that matters is not Brent but repair time at al-Mesabaah, and nobody has published it.