Saudi Arabia has resumed crude tanker loadings at the Red Sea port of Yanbu after Saudi Aramco restarted the kingdom’s East-West Pipeline, according to Reuters.
Aramco notified customers on Monday evening of its October loading schedule from Yanbu, while a refining customer loaded a cargo from the port late last week.
The pipeline was shut on September 11 following drone strikes, halting crude exports from Yanbu. Operations resumed on September 22, but tanker loadings did not restart immediately as crude volumes were rebuilt. Two vessels scheduled to load on September 23 did not do so.
Crude loadings from Yanbu were estimated at about 2m barrels per day after shipments resumed. Pipeline throughput was estimated at between 2m and 2.65m bpd and could rise to between 3m and 4m bpd in the coming days.
A full return to the pre-shutdown rate of about 5.5m bpd could take another month. The East-West Pipeline has capacity of 7m bpd.
European Space Agency satellite imagery from September 27 indicated that nearly 10m barrels of crude were being loaded at Yanbu and the nearby Al Muajjiz terminal. Refined products were also being loaded.
The recovery in oil flows weighed on crude prices, with Brent settling 2.6% lower at $102.59 per barrel on Tuesday and US West Texas Intermediate falling 3.5% to $89.38.
Saudi Arabian Oil Co, known as Saudi Aramco, is an integrated energy and chemicals company headquartered in Dhahran. Its upstream operations are primarily based in Saudi Arabia, while its downstream activities extend internationally.