Saudi Arabia cancels all October crude shipments to European refiners

The kingdom's outright halt suggests exporters are planning around a longer pipeline outage rather than a quick return to normal volumes.

Saudi Arabia has told European oil refiners they will receive no crude oil next month, an outright cancellation rather than a reduction.

The move follows weeks of disruption to the kingdom's east-west pipeline. Three pump stations on the line were hit in an attack, the second confirmed strike on the same pipeline within days. Saudi Arabia later moved to restore about half of the pipeline's capacity, and officials put full restoration at around six weeks, an improvement on earlier estimates of three to five weeks offline.

The security situation around the disruption has not eased. Sirens sounded in Jeddah and flights were halted after a projectile was reportedly fired at the city. Days earlier, a Houthi drone attack killed one person in Saudi Arabia, and the group had separately launched a drone at the city of Taif. Saudi Arabia has since asked Oman to mediate a two-week truce with the Houthis, with an agreement possibly announced by the end of the week, while China and Pakistan have both pressed for restraint from the group's backers.

Oil futures jumped more than 4% on the day the pipeline attacks first were reported, and Brent and WTI have risen sharply since on the loss of Red Sea loadings. The full cancellation to European refiners, rather than a partial cut, signals that Saudi Arabia expects the disruption to last longer than the partial-recovery timeline it had previously given. That leaves the risk of tighter global crude supply firmly in play for as long as the truce talks and pipeline repairs remain unresolved.