[MARKET UPDATE] US index futures decline at the reopen and oil jumps higher by around 2% after postponement of Persian Gulf meeting and with damages to Saudi's East-West Pipeline said to take over a month to repair, threatening up to 4% of global supply

Physical damage to Gulf crude infrastructure with a repair timeline measured in weeks is the type of disruption that has historically priced through the front of the oil curve first, with backwardation steepening as prompt barrels tighten against intact later supply. The East-West Pipeline matters because it is the principal bypass around the Strait of Hormuz; damage to it removes the safety valve itself, which is a different risk from a chokepoint threat and tends to draw a larger and stickier premium than rhetoric alone. A supply-at-risk estimate in the low single digits of global output sits near the upper bound of what strategic reserve releases have offset in past episodes, so the spare-capacity question, who holds it and how fast it can flow, becomes the operative variable. The postponement of the Gulf meeting removes the near-term diplomatic circuit breaker, and in comparable sequences the premium has tended to persist until either a rescheduled date is fixed or repair progress is confirmed. Follow-ons worth noting are official statements on repair timelines, any coordinated stockpile response, tanker and insurance repricing in the region, and whether equity futures stabilise once the crude move is seen as contained to the energy complex rather than a broader growth shock.