Saudi Arabia is reportedly pumping close to 6mln bpd oil on East-West pipeline and has about 4.5mln bpd pipeline flow available for export, Bloomberg reports

Ramping flows through the East-West pipeline to the Red Sea is the established Saudi workaround when the Strait of Hormuz looks compromised, and episodes of this kind have historically been read as a supply-continuity signal rather than new production: barrels are being rerouted, not added, which matters for whether the risk premium embedded in prompt crude and freight starts to bleed out. The distinction worth drawing is between export availability and actual liftings, since the usable figure is what is loaded at Yanbu, capped by Red Sea port capacity, versus the headline pipeline rate. In comparable past rerouting episodes the tell has been the Brent-Dubai spread and tanker rates on the Red Sea leg, which compress as buyers confirm replacement barrels while insurance costs on Gulf loadings stay elevated. Worth watching is the split between the roughly two-fifths of normal Saudi export volume this route covers and the balance still hostage to the strait, since partial continuity has tended to cap, not remove, the geopolitical premium. Follow-ons are loadings data out of the Red Sea terminal and any parallel moves by other Gulf producers with bypass capacity.