Oil prices surged more than $3 a barrel on Tuesday, September 15, after shipping industry sources reported that oil loadings at Saudi Arabia's Red Sea port of Yanbu had been suspended, and Libya halted operations at three oil fields — two unrelated disruptions compounding fears that key supply routes could remain constrained for weeks.
How High Prices Climbed
Brent crude futures rose $3.49, or 3.3%, to $109.20 a barrel, while US West Texas Intermediate (WTI) jumped $5.08, or 5.01%, to $106.46 a barrel. If the gains held, both contracts were on track to close at their highest levels in nearly four months.
The Saudi Pipeline and Port Disruption
The immediate catalyst traces back to Friday, when a Houthi attack forced Saudi Arabia to shut down its critical East-West pipeline — a 1,200-kilometer conduit carrying up to 7 million barrels of crude per day from eastern production fields to export terminals on the Red Sea coast at Yanbu. That pipeline has served as a vital alternative export route for Saudi Arabia, the world's largest crude exporter, allowing it to bypass the blockaded Strait of Hormuz entirely. With loadings at Yanbu now reportedly suspended and sources indicating Riyadh has informed European customers that some late-September crude cargoes will be cancelled, traders are increasingly pricing in the possibility that this disruption extends well beyond a short-term outage.
Renewed Houthi Attacks
Supply concerns intensified further after Iran-backed Houthi forces in Yemen launched fresh attacks on Saudi Arabia on Monday, adding to a string of recent incidents targeting Saudi territory, including a separate claimed strike on a Saudi military base in a neighboring province. Saudi state media released footage showing damage to homes and a mosque in the kingdom's southern Jazan province, which officials attributed to Houthi forces operating from Yemen.
Diplomacy Stalls in Parallel
The escalation has directly undermined diplomatic efforts to ease the broader regional crisis: a planned meeting in Oman between Gulf states and Iran, intended to address tensions around the Strait of Hormuz, was postponed — with Oman's foreign minister citing the need for consensus following the pipeline attack. No new date for the talks has been set.
A Second Front: Houthi Territorial Gains
Compounding the Saudi disruption, Houthi forces have separately advanced along Yemen's western coast, capturing the port city of Mokha and the strategically important Perim Island — territory sitting near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, another critical waterway linking the Red Sea to global oil markets. That advance raises the prospect of a second major maritime chokepoint coming under threat simultaneously with the ongoing Hormuz blockage.
Libya's Unrelated Crisis
Separately from the Iran-driven Middle East disruption, Libya's National Oil Corporation (NOC) said operations at three oil fields were suspended after protesting members of the Petroleum Facilities Guard shut a valve on the Hamada-Zawiya crude export pipeline. The Guard warned the shutdown could expand further if its demands aren't met, and the NOC said it may declare force majeure — a legal mechanism releasing a company from contractual delivery obligations due to circumstances beyond its control — if the valve remains closed or additional fields are forced offline. Libya was the seventh-largest crude oil producer in OPEC as of 2023, according to the US Energy Information Administration, making any sustained disruption to its output a meaningful independent factor in global supply.
Why WTI Rose Even Faster Than Brent
Notably, WTI's percentage gain outpaced Brent's on Tuesday. Analyst Andy Lipow explained that traders have been buying WTI futures on bets that Saudi export disruptions will last longer than initially expected. Because US refiners can readily switch between crude grades, demand for sweet crude varieties like WTI could increase as buyers seek alternatives to disrupted Saudi supply — lending additional, US-specific support to prices beyond the general geopolitical risk premium reflected in Brent.
Diesel Adds Another Pressure Point
Adding to the broader energy squeeze, continued attacks on energy infrastructure in Russia and Ukraine pushed US diesel futures to a more than four-year intraday high on Tuesday — meaning fuel markets are now being squeezed simultaneously by disruptions tied to two entirely separate global conflicts.
The Bigger Picture
Tuesday's price surge illustrates just how fragile global oil supply chains have become after more than six months of the US-Iran conflict, with markets now having to absorb shocks from multiple independent sources — Saudi pipeline attacks, Houthi territorial advances, stalled diplomacy, and an unrelated Libyan labor dispute — all converging within the same trading week. For continuing live oil market coverage, see the full Reuters Commodities report.
With both benchmark contracts on pace for their highest close in nearly four months, and no clear resolution in sight for either the Saudi pipeline outage or the Libyan field shutdowns, oil markets look set to remain highly volatile in the days ahead.