Saudi Arabia is looking at ways to expand its oil pipeline capacity to destinations outside the Persian Gulf to 10 million barrels a day within two to three years, Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told the WPC Energy Congress in Riyadh on Monday. The plan combines upgraded pumping stations on the East-West pipeline, which was moving 5.8 million barrels a day as of October 6 after a September drone attack knocked it offline, with repurposing a gas pipeline to carry crude: about 1.2 million barrels a day within seven to eight weeks, potentially rising to 3 million with further investment.
The repurposed line would revert to domestic gas service after May, ahead of summer demand, and Aramco is installing dual-use pumping and compression so the pipeline can carry oil or gas as circumstances require. The minister said the East-West pipeline’s wartime role, carrying crude from the eastern producing region to Yanbu on the Red Sea and bypassing the Strait of Hormuz, had more than recovered its cost.
The main existing bypass, the East-West (Petroline) system, has a stated maximum capacity of seven million barrels a day, though actual throughput depends on operating conditions and refinery demand. Aramco chief executive Amin Nasser said in May that roughly two million barrels a day of that capacity served refineries on the western coast, leaving about five million a day available for export, a split that describes capacity allocation rather than guaranteed shipments. In July, Riyadh was already examining up to two million barrels a day of additional Red Sea pipeline capacity with preliminary contacts involving neighbouring producers including Kuwait, but no final investment decision or binding cross-border arrangement was established at that stage. The 10-million-barrel target therefore marks a broader objective than earlier discussion, and as 1arabia notes, it is an ambition under examination, not an approved construction programme: no contractors, financing or project-level timetable have been announced.