Saudi Arabia has restored full pumping capacity on the East-West pipeline — also known as the Petroline — returning throughput to 7 million barrels per day following Iranian drone strikes that knocked out one of its eleven pumping stations in early April. The restoration was confirmed by the kingdom’s Ministry of Energy and represents the completion of a contingency plan decades in the making.

The pipeline was built during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, designed precisely for this scenario: a hostile power threatening the Strait of Hormuz. Running 1,200 kilometers across the Arabian Peninsula from the Abqaiq processing hub in the Eastern Province to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, it moves Saudi crude entirely overland, rendering the strait irrelevant to the kingdom’s export capacity. In 2026, accompanying natural gas liquids pipelines were converted to carry crude oil, raising total capacity from 5 million to 7 million barrels per day.