Brent, US crude jump over $3 after Saudi Yanbu port halts oil loadings
Storage at Yanbu covers only five to seven days of exports, according to earlier reporting, with the East-West pipeline still shut after a September attack.
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Chart: USO, a fund that tracks crude, daily closes either side
UpdateTuesday, September 15, 2026 at 1:25 PM ET
The price jump has widened from over $3 to $5 a barrel, and Saudi Arabia has also cancelled some cargoes, beyond the Yanbu loading halt reported earlier.
US crude extended its rally to $5 a barrel after Saudi Arabia cancelled some oil cargoes in addition to suspending loadings at Yanbu.
Brent crude and US crude futures rose more than $3 a barrel after shipping sources told Reuters that oil loadings at Saudi Arabia's Red Sea port of Yanbu had been suspended.
The suspension adds to an outage that has already cut into Saudi exports. The East-West pipeline, which normally carries 4 to 5 million barrels a day around the Strait of Hormuz, has been shut since a drone attack hit two pump stations on September 10, according to satellite imagery cited in earlier reporting. Officials have said the line may eventually resume at reduced capacity but have not said how much that would be. The repair timeline has since stretched from an initial three to five weeks to six to eight weeks.
Yanbu's own storage covers only five to seven days of exports. With the pipeline still down, the port's halt leaves Saudi Arabia more reliant on shipping crude through the Strait of Hormuz to reach buyers.
The Yanbu suspension adds another choke point to Saudi exports that were already constrained, but the size of the price jump reflects supply concerns that were already built into the market rather than a new escalation. Traders have largely priced in the pipeline outage as diplomatic overtures toward Iran continue.