Saudi Arabia shut down a major crude oil pipeline on Thursday after multiple drones launched from Iraqi territory struck the line near Medina, touching off fires and knocking out one of the last significant routes for moving Gulf crude around the blockaded Strait of Hormuz. The closure of the East-West pipeline, also known as Petroline, adds a second contested chokepoint to a regional oil-supply crisis that has already pushed pump and crude prices to multi-year highs.
The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs said "several drones originating from Iraq" hit the pipeline, causing injuries and material damage, according to a statement carried by Al Jazeera. Satellite imagery showed black smoke rising near the Red Sea province, and the kingdom shut the line as a precaution while it assessed the damage.
Several drones originating from Iraq targeted the pipeline, resulting in injuries and material damage.
Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs
The East-West pipeline is no minor asset. Built in 1981 and expanded several times since, the roughly 750-mile Petroline system carries crude from Abqaiq, in Saudi Arabia's eastern oil fields, to the Red Sea export terminal at Yanbu, with a design capacity of about 7 million barrels a day. It has become Riyadh's principal workaround since Iran effectively closed shipping through the Strait of Hormuz in late February, when a US-Israeli air campaign against Iranian targets triggered retaliatory strikes on tankers and warships in the strait.
Baghdad scrambles to contain the fallout
Iraq's government confirmed the drones had been launched from its territory, tracing them to Maysan province in the country's south. Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi dismissed the province's military operations commander and ordered an investigative council to determine how the attack was staged and who was responsible, according to Iraqi officials cited by regional outlets. An Iraqi armed forces spokesperson said Baghdad "condemns" the strike and rejects "any aggression that threatens the Kingdom's security."
Saudi Arabia said it would hold off on retaliating "at this stage" at Baghdad's request, choosing instead to support Iraqi efforts to prevent further launches from its soil — a notable act of restraint given the kingdom's history of responding forcefully to attacks on its energy infrastructure. The Gulf Cooperation Council was blunter, with its secretary-general calling the strike "a dangerous escalation and an unacceptable threat" to Saudi security and vital installations.
A second chokepoint under strain
The attack lands as global oil markets are already stretched thin. Brent crude settled at $104.61 a barrel on Friday, down on the day but still up roughly 9% for the week, as traders weighed the pipeline outage against a partial pullback in tanker attacks elsewhere. Just two days earlier, Houthi forces in Yemen seized Perim Island, the rocky outcrop that splits the Bab el-Mandeb Strait into its two navigable channels — meaning both of the main detours around a shuttered Hormuz are now, to varying degrees, contested. The US Energy Information Administration has repeatedly flagged the East-West line as critical spare capacity for exactly this kind of scenario.
Yanbu's export terminals can only load about 4.5 million barrels a day even when the pipeline itself is running at full 7-million-barrel capacity, a bottleneck that traders say leaves little room to absorb a prolonged outage without further price pressure. Energy analysts said the market's initial, modest reaction likely reflects hope that the shutdown proves temporary rather than confidence that the underlying risk has eased.
For now, Saudi officials have not said when the pipeline might resume full operation, saying only that flows were suspended "as a precaution." Riyadh added that it reserves the right to take unspecified protective measures if attacks from Iraqi territory continue. Iraq's investigative council has yet to report findings, and no group has claimed responsibility for the strike. With both Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb now compromised to some degree, analysts and diplomats say the coming days will test whether Baghdad can rein in whoever launched the drones — and whether Riyadh's patience holds if it cannot.
