Saudi Arabia Turns to Dark Tankers and Hormuz Rerouting After Pipeline Drone Strikes

Recent drone attacks on Saudi Arabia's vital East-West pipeline have dealt a severe blow to the country's crude export network, forcing the kingdom to rely on high-risk Persian Gulf shipping corridors and covert maritime operations to keep oil moving. The strikes disabled a critical section of the conduit, immediately taking between four and five million barrels per day off global energy markets and sharply limiting Riyadh's logistics options.

While the exact duration of the disruption remains unconfirmed, preliminary estimates reported by The Associated Press indicate that required repairs could take three to five weeks, according to two regional officials. Until the network is brought back online, the world's second-largest crude producer faces severe bottlenecks in delivering supplies to its international customers.

Stretching 1,200 kilometers (746 miles), the East-West pipeline connects the kingdom's prolific eastern oil fields directly to the western port of Yanbu on the Red Sea coast. The infrastructure serves as a strategic bypass around the Strait of Hormuz, a maritime choke point that has remained largely closed since the outbreak of the United States-Israel war on Iran on February 28.

The pipeline shutdown compounds a steep and sustained drop in overall Saudi crude exports over recent months. Total loadings, which exceeded 7.5 million barrels per day in January and February, fell to approximately 2.3 million barrels per day in August and stood at roughly 2.1 million barrels per day during the first half of September, representing a decline of more than 70 percent.

Market analysts observe that headline export figures may slightly undercount actual seaborne volumes. Because some shuttle tankers operating in the region have turned off their vessel-tracking equipment while navigating through Hormuz, an undetermined share of crude movements is not reflected in standard tracking databases.

Saudi Arabia's export system is organized around two primary coastal corridors: the Persian Gulf to the east and the Red Sea to the west. Under normal conditions, Red Sea shipments can transit either northward to European markets via the Suez Canal and the Sumed Pipeline, or southward into the Indian Ocean through the Bab al-Mandeb strait.

Before the outbreak of hostilities, the vast majority of Saudi crude was transported through the 39-kilometer (24-mile) Strait of Hormuz toward buyers in Asia. Shipments across all routes averaged between seven and eight million barrels per day, loaded primarily at the eastern terminals of Ras Tanura and Ras al-Ju’aymah, with Ras Tanura alone handling an average of about 5.4 million barrels per day in 2025.

With the East-West pipeline disabled and the southern passage through the Red Sea rendered hostile, Saudi oil planners are being forced to route exports back through the Persian Gulf. The move requires navigating the Strait of Hormuz despite elevated security risks, physical dangers to vessels, and substantial logistical expenses.

Rishi Rajanala, a research specialist in Oil Americas at LSEG Data & Analytics, noted that the kingdom faces a narrow set of operational choices following the pipeline outage. The primary path entails moving higher volumes from eastern Gulf terminals through the Strait of Hormuz, including conducting ship-to-ship transfers in waters outside the passage, such as off the coast of Sohar in Oman.

Rajanala pointed out that Saudi Arabia can also draw down crude inventories pre-positioned along its western coast and at Egypt's Ain Sukhna and Sidi Kerir terminals to maintain European deliveries via the Sumed Pipeline, though only until existing storage runs dry. A third measure involves initiating a phased restart of the East-West pipeline once partial repairs are achieved.

To navigate the perilous conditions around the Strait of Hormuz, vessel operators are increasingly resorting to covert shipping practices. Tankers frequently switch off their Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders when passing through Omani waters, attempting to avoid hostile detection while coordinating movements in the area.

Richard Matthews, director of consultancy and research at London-based Gibson Shipbrokers, explained that re-routing crude through Hormuz will further inflate freight rates and introduce additional supply chain friction. Matthews noted that while ships turning off transponders likely coordinate with the United States Navy, they remain vulnerable to attacks, adding that the outage at Yanbu does not appear to have an immediate resolution.

Despite these hazards, early September data indicates an uptick in traffic along the eastern route. Rahul Choudhary, vice president of upstream research at Rystad Energy, reported that crude flows via the Strait of Hormuz climbed above two million barrels per day in the first two weeks of September, an increase of roughly one million barrels per day compared to August.

Choudhary projected that shipments through Hormuz will rise further in the second half of September, noting that Saudi Aramco has begun offering alternative crude loadings to Asian refiners out of Sohar. The analyst stated that Saudi Arabia is expected to lean more heavily on unmonitored tanker maneuvers in the coming days to offset the capacity lost at Yanbu.

If repairs to the East-West pipeline extend beyond several weeks, the kingdom's upstream operations could face mounting strain. Once domestic and Egyptian storage tanks are depleted, crude that cannot be moved through the Persian Gulf will either have to be placed into secondary storage or left unproduced, placing further downward pressure on Saudi oil output.