Saudi Arabia has resumed crude oil loading at Yanbu on the Red Sea coast after restarting the pipeline that feeds the terminal, Reuters reported, citing a source familiar with the operation.

The East-West pipeline, also known as Petroline, carries crude from production hubs in the Eastern Province across the kingdom to Yanbu on the west coast. Loading operations at the terminal were halted when the line went down, briefly interrupting one of the kingdom's two main crude export routes.

The restart restores the full set of Saudi export outlets. Crude departing Yanbu serves buyers in Europe and the Americas via the Red Sea and the Suez Canal, while the bulk of the kingdom's exports — the bulk of its roughly 7 million bpd of shipments in most months — move from Gulf coast terminals such as Ras Tanura and Ju'aymah through the Strait of Hormuz.

The interruption and subsequent recovery at Yanbu come as the market continues to price the risk premium attached to Middle East logistics. Analysts have repeatedly flagged Red Sea transit as a chokepoint where disruptions can reprice freight and insurance, and any outage on a line of Petroline's scale — its nameplate capacity is around 5 million bpd — would tighten available crude supply to Atlantic-basin refiners in particular.

The source did not specify the duration of the halt or the volume of cargoes delayed during the outage. Loading schedules for the terminal, which feed the official selling price mechanism Saudi Aramco sets monthly for its barrels, are typically adjusted to make up deferred cargoes once throughput returns.

No damage assessment or cause for the pipeline stoppage was disclosed.

Watch item: the pace of cargo loadings at Yanbu over the coming days, and whether Saudi Aramco's monthly allocation and OSP announcements show any residual impact from the interruption.