Petroline

The Petroline, formally the East-West Crude Oil Pipeline, is Saudi Arabia's 1,200-kilometre overland crude oil pipeline running from the Eastern Province oilfields to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. On 12 April 2026, two days after the US Hormuz blockade began, Petroline was restored to its full design capacity of 7 million Barrels Per Day — roughly half of Saudi Arabia's total export capacity — following engineering work that had kept it below peak throughput. The restoration immediately gave Riyadh an export route that entirely bypasses the Strait of Hormuz.

Petroline was built by Saudi Aramco and commissioned in 1981, originally as a wartime hedge during the Iran-Iraq War when Hormuz tanker traffic came under fire. It was expanded to its current 7 mbpd capacity in subsequent decades and is operated by Aramco. The pipeline has an emergency pumping capacity that, under surge conditions, can handle additional throughput. A parallel products pipeline, the IPSA Petroline, runs nearby. The Eastern Province terminus connects directly to the Abqaiq-Yanbu system, the world's largest oil processing facility, meaning Petroline's throughput is constrained primarily by its pump stations and Saudi production schedules, not terminal capacity.

The April 2026 restoration changed the strategic calculus around the Hormuz blockade. Saudi Arabia could — in principle — sustain the bulk of its crude exports through Yanbu and the Red Sea route even if Hormuz remained closed for an extended period. The Bab al-Mandeb Strait, where Yemen's Houthis retain threat capability, is the residual vulnerability in that route. Analysts including Mona Yacoubian at CSIS warned that Houthi engagement on Red Sea shipping remained a real risk if the blockade tightened — pointing to the limits of Petroline as a complete Hormuz substitute.