How soon can Saudi Arabia restart its key oil pipeline?
State-run oil company Saudi Aramco is reportedly working to bypass a damaged section of the East-West Pipeline to regain partial capacity.
Saudi Arabia is reportedly planning to restore its critical cross-country oil pipeline to around half capacity within days after it was shut down on Friday following a drone attack.
What happened: State-run oil company Saudi Aramco is working to bypass a damaged section of the East-West Pipeline, Bloomberg reported on Wednesday, citing a person familiar with the matter. The source said Aramco is looking to restore the pipeline to full capacity in about six weeks.
Aramco and the Saudi Energy Ministry did not respond to requests for comment.
Whether Aramco can meet that timetable will depend partly on the extent of the damage. “Given that it seems pump stations have been destroyed, I would say that it will take these six weeks or more. But the partial restart was probably faster than expected,” Arne Lohmann Rasmussen, chief analyst and head of research at Copenhagen-based Global Risk Management, told Al-Monitor.
