Ongoing7 earlier updates8 days

This story has run 8 times over 8 days, starting Sep 9.

Sep 9Houthi missiles and drones hit 4 Saudi cities, wounding 73 and halting Aramco's 400,000-barrel-a-day Jazan refinery
Sep 11Houthis capture Yemen's Mokha from Saudi-backed forces 46 miles from Bab el-Mandeb
Sep 12UpdateHouthi forces captured Mokha and Perim island in the 28-kilometer Bab el-Mandeb strait.
Sep 13UpdateA day after the Bab el-Mandeb capture, maritime monitors have recorded no new transit halts
Sep 14UpdateSaudi Arabia shuts Hormuz-bypass pipeline, oil rises more than $3 with 4% of supply at risk
Sep 15UpdateHouthis seize two more Red Sea islands as Saudi pipeline faces 3-to-5-week outage
Sep 16UpdateSaudi Arabia suspends loadings at its last open oil terminal; September cargoes cancelled
Sep 17Attacks on Saudi export pipeline push WTI crude to $107.02 a barrel, a 30-day high — this issue

Attacks on Saudi export pipeline push WTI crude to $107.02 a barrel, a 30-day high

Political Guyentist · September 17, 20262 min read

Beijing has spent the Iran war selling oil out of its own reserves instead of buying more on the world market, which held prices down for everyone.

Strikes by Yemen's Houthi rebels on a Saudi export pipeline have cut the flow of crude reaching the kingdom's loading terminals, and buyers bid up every barrel still moving. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark grade, settled at $107.02 a barrel on Tuesday, Sept. 15 — the highest close in the Energy Department’s last 30 trading days — up from $77.33 on Aug. 4.

China has spent the Iran war absorbing the shock by selling oil out of its own reserves rather than buying more on the world market, which held prices down for everyone.

The U.S. Embassy in Riyadh told Americans on Wednesday, Sept. 16, to reconsider travel to the kingdom.

Still open. How much of the line's capacity is out, and for how long, Riyadh has not said. Without that, how much of the six-week move in crude the outage explains is not known.

West Texas Intermediate spot price

What we’re less sure of3 of 6 claims

Medium
Attacks on a Saudi export pipeline cut the flow of crude reaching the kingdom's loading terminals and drove the price rise.
Causal link is the framing of the FT and NYT pieces on the Saudi pipeline attacks, though the story does not name a speaker for it in its own wording.
Medium
China has spent the Iran war selling oil out of its own reserves rather than buying on the world market, holding prices down for everyone, and those reserves are near the end of that run — Beijing is 'coming off its crash diet.'
Quoted characterization drawn from the FT report, but the story does not name the analyst or official who said it, and only one outlet stands behind the reserve-drawdown reading.
Medium
Reporting on the Saudi outage says a long restriction on exports would push prices higher still.
Explicitly attributed to the reporting (NYT's 'could hit highest levels in months'); it is a forecast, not an outcome.