Saudi Arabia shut down East-West pipeline as Houthis tighten grip on Red Sea shipping

6 min readUpdated: Sep 12, 2026 06:47 PM IST

The East-West pipeline carries crude from Saudi Arabia’s eastern oil-producing region to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, allowing exports to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. (Photo: Al-generated)

Saudi Arabia has shut down a major oil pipeline after a drone attack, while Yemen’s Houthi rebels have seized a strategically vital island guarding the entrance to the Red Sea developments that mark a dangerous new front in the wider war with Iran.

The kingdom’s East-West pipeline, built in the 1980s, was hit by multiple drones on Thursday. Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Energy confirmed the line was shut down “as a precautionary measure.”

According to CNN, US officials say the strike damaged pump stations along the route, and satellite images appear to show extensive fire damage at one pumping station, with a separate image showing black smoke rising from another site.

Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry later released a statement condemning “the attack on the East-West Pipeline in the Riyadh and Madinah regions by several drones coming from Iraq, which resulted in injuries and some damage that is currently being addressed.”

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12 September 2026

Red Sea flashpoint: pipeline down, island seized

Saudi Arabia's main bypass around the Strait of Hormuz is shut. At the other end of the Red Sea, the Houthis now hold the island in the middle of the Bab el-Mandeb.

Saudi Arabia

Yemen

Iraq

$100+

Per barrel this week

7m bpd

Pipeline capacity, now shut

28 km

Width of the strait

What happened The pipeline The strait Why it matters

Two days

Both ends squeezed at once

Saudi Arabia

East-West pipeline shut down

Drones struck pump stations in the Riyadh and Madinah regions on Thursday, causing fires and injuries. Riyadh says they came from Iraq, and has held off retaliating at the Iraqi prime minister's request.

Yemen

Houthis take Mokha, then the island

After capturing the port of Mokha, Houthi forces reached Perim island — also called Mayun — once government troops withdrew. They now hold Yemen's entire Red Sea coastline.

No group has claimed the pipeline attack. The island's capture was confirmed to AP by a senior Yemeni government military official and a Houthi official, both speaking anonymously.

The bypass

What the pipeline was for

Petroline runs about 1,200 km from the eastern oil fields to Yanbu on the Red Sea. Its whole purpose is to move crude to market without passing through Hormuz — where Iran has been striking ships.

EASTERN FIELDS

→

PIPELINE SHUT

→

YANBU & RED SEA

Capacity is around 7 million barrels a day, with roughly 5 million moving through it. Saudi Arabia shut it as a precaution; no timeline for restarting has been given.

Saudi crude output had already fallen to 6.238 million bpd in August — its lowest since 1990.

Three days

How the strait was taken

Sept 10

Mokha

Port city falls after government-aligned forces withdraw

Sept 11

Dhubab

Advance reaches the coast opposite the island

Sept 11-12

Perim / Mayun

Fighters cross by boat after government forces pull out. The island splits the strait into two shipping lanes

Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree says the strait stays open to all shipping except Saudi vessels, already blockaded since July.

The squeeze

Why both matter together

The bind

Neither exit is clear

Hormuz is contested in the east. The pipeline built to avoid it is shut. And its Red Sea outlet now runs past a strait the Houthis control.

For shipping

The long way round

Operators avoiding the Red Sea and Suez face the Cape of Good Hope instead — a costlier, far longer route to Europe.

For prices

Crude above $100

Oil broke $100 a barrel this week for the first time in months, closing more than 8% higher.

A fast-moving conflict. Territorial control, pipeline status and prices are changing daily.

Source: Associated Press, CNN, NBC News, CNBC, Newsweek and AFP reporting, 11-12 September 2026; Saudi Energy Ministry and Saudi Press Agency statements.

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“The Kingdom clarifies that, based on a request from the Iraqi Prime Minister to give the brotherly Iraqi government the opportunity to take the necessary measures to prevent attacks launched from Iraqi territory against the Kingdom and neighboring countries, the Kingdom has chosen not to respond at this stage, in support of the Iraqi government’s efforts,” the statement said. Iraq’s government condemned the assault and ordered an investigation.

This is not the first such incident Saudi Arabia and the United States bombed Iran-backed militias inside Iraq back in July following earlier drone strikes on Saudi oil facilities attacks regional officials say the Houthis helped plan.

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Why the pipeline matters so much right now

With the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed off by Iranian strikes on shipping, the East-West pipeline has become Saudi Arabia’s lifeline for getting crude to international markets. Exports through the pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu had more than doubled to over five million barrels a day by early June.

Supporters of Yemen’s Houthi rebels chant and raise rifles during a rally organized to celebrate the group’s capture of Mayun Island in the strategic Bab el-Mandeb Strait, in Houthi-controlled Sanaa, Yemen. (Photo: AP)

CNN reports that experts believe repairing the pump stations should be more straightforward than fixing damage to the pipeline itself, though the full extent of the harm remains unclear. Separately, Saudi Arabia has told OPEC that its crude output plunged last month to its lowest level since 1990.

Houthis capture Mayun Island

Away from the pipeline, Houthi fighters have taken Mayun also known as Perim a small volcanic island sitting inside the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, one of the busiest shipping corridors on earth. The seizure was confirmed to the AP by a senior official in Yemen’s internationally recognised government and separately by a Houthi source, both speaking anonymously.

This satellite photo taken Sept. 11, 2026, shows Mayun island, also known as Perim, one day after being taken by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.(Pléiades Neo © Airbus DS 2026 via AP)

It follows the Houthi capture of the port city of Mokha on Thursday, roughly 80 kilometres from the strait. A senior Yemeni military official told the AP he was stunned Saudi forces made no attempt to stop it, suggesting Riyadh may not have received US backing for a larger air campaign. He also pointed to poor coordination between Yemen’s army and allied militias as handing the Houthis “a priceless opportunity.”

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In a statement, Houthi armed forces claimed further gains along the coast and warned of “escalation for escalation” against Saudi Arabia, while insisting shipping remained safe for everyone except Saudi vessels.

Oil prices surge past $100 a barrel

Crude prices have climbed back above $100 a barrel this week, a level analysts say hands Tehran extra leverage in any future negotiations. Shipping traffic through Bab el-Mandeb had already fallen by roughly 60% since Houthi attacks began in late 2023, and renewed threats are said to have curbed a recent recovery in traffic.

With the Red Sea route now under greater threat, Saudi Arabia has been forced to divert oil northward via the Suez Canal or an overland pipeline through Egypt a considerably longer journey for customers in Asia. The Houthis have signalled they may target this route too, having struck a Saudi vessel in the northern Red Sea in late August.

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Iran calls for talks as Yemen’s truce threatens to collapse

Tehran has publicly backed its Houthi allies, with Iran’s Foreign Ministry urging an end to Saudi Arabia’s blockade of Houthi-held territory and calling for renewed Saudi-Houthi negotiations. A spokesperson for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard went further this week, saying any US settlement talks must now include Yemen the first time Tehran has made that link explicit.

Saudi Arabia insists it remains open to negotiation but retains the right to defend itself. The foreign ministers of both countries reportedly discussed efforts to restore stability on Thursday.

Meanwhile, the surge in fighting threatens to unravel a fragile truce that has largely held since 2022 in a civil war that has already killed 150,000 people and pushed millions to the brink of famine. The UN’s migration agency says more than 46,000 people have fled the fighting in the past week alone, with displacement numbers more than doubling and expected to rise further. Aid workers say fleeing residents, including medical staff, have left with only what they could carry, forcing groups like Doctors Without Borders to scramble to keep hospitals such as Mokha’s running.