Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline can shift crude away from the Persian Gulf, but it can’t by itself secure delivery to customers. If Bab el-Mandeb becomes unavailable, oil at Yanbu still needs a viable sea route out of the Red Sea. The Suez Canal and Egypt’s SUMED pipeline offer alternatives, yet neither appears sized to absorb a sustained diversion of several million barrels a day without delays and higher transport costs.
That distinction matters for oil markets: production capacity is only part of supply. The other test is whether cargoes can reach buyers on time. A threat to the southern Red Sea chokepoint would expose the limits of Saudi Arabia’s export flexibility and could affect tanker availability well beyond the Kingdom’s own shipments.
Yanbu shifts the route risk
Saudi Arabia built the East-West Pipeline to move crude from the Persian Gulf to Yanbu on the Red Sea. Its stated nameplate capacity is about 7 million barrels per day. Some of that oil supplies refineries and petrochemical facilities in western Saudi Arabia; the balance can be exported. During the Iran war and Hormuz crisis described in the source, Yanbu became the Kingdom’s main export outlet, reducing exposure to threats in the Gulf.
That route changes where the exposure sits. A closure or sustained threat at Bab el-Mandeb could prevent tankers from leaving the Red Sea to the south. The pipeline would still deliver crude to the coast, but the maritime route required to move it to market would be constrained. The source describes the current Houthi blockade as making the strait inaccessible; the consequences it outlines depend on that disruption persisting.
For cargoes bound for Europe or the United States, ships can head north through the Suez Canal. Asia presents a more difficult routing problem. Saudi Arabia’s major crude buyers include China, India, Japan and South Korea. Cargoes headed to those markets would need to travel north through the Red Sea, pass through Suez into the Mediterranean, then sail around the Cape of Good Hope and east toward Asia. The source estimates such voyages could take six or seven weeks, compared with about three weeks on the usual route.
That extra time would raise fuel use and transport costs, while leaving cargoes and working capital tied up at sea for longer. The route would also need to handle refined products as well as crude. Yanbu exports diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, naphtha, fuel oil and liquefied petroleum gas, according to the source.
Suez and SUMED have practical limits
The Suez Canal remains open in the scenario described, but its availability doesn’t make it a direct substitute for Bab el-Mandeb. The canal was not designed to replace unrestricted passage through the southern Red Sea for several million barrels a day of Saudi crude, refined products and petrochemicals. More traffic could mean longer waits, higher costs and competition for canal capacity among oil tankers, container ships, LNG carriers, bulk vessels, cruise ships and naval traffic.
Vessel size adds another constraint. Saudi crude exports rely on very large crude carriers, or VLCCs, which can carry about 2 million barrels. These ships are well suited to long-distance crude transport, but a fully loaded VLCC cannot pass through Suez because of draft restrictions. Canal expansions have not removed that limitation.
Egypt’s SUMED pipeline provides a way around the draft issue. It runs between Ain Sokhna on the Red Sea and Sidi Kerir on the Mediterranean. Crude can be unloaded from a VLCC at Ain Sokhna, moved through the pipeline, then loaded onto a vessel at Sidi Kerir. The source cites effective SUMED throughput of 2.3 million to 2.5 million barrels per day, which it describes as adequate for current commercial flows but far below the capacity potentially needed to handle Yanbu exports redirected from the southern route.
SUMED also has other users, existing commitments and maintenance requirements. In a sustained disruption, spare capacity would therefore be limited. The pipeline could help move some cargoes through the Suez route, while becoming another point of congestion if a much larger volume arrives.
The pressure would show up at both terminals. At Ain Sokhna, additional VLCCs would need berth space, storage, pumping and unloading equipment. At Sidi Kerir, crude would have to be reloaded. Each transfer adds time and creates opportunities for queues. As vessels wait, demurrage costs rise and schedules become harder to manage.
Longer voyages can tighten tanker supply
More ships entering the Suez corridor would add pressure beyond the terminals. Canal transits depend on pilots, traffic management and scheduled convoys, and the canal already serves a broad mix of commercial and military traffic. The source argues that a significant increase in crude carriers and product tankers could fill anchorages and extend waiting times. Tighter security procedures could add further delays.
Product tankers can generally transit Suez without SUMED, but they would still compete for canal slots, pilots, terminal access and anchorage space. That matters because fuel supply chains can be sensitive to delivery timing. The source expects delays to affect regional inventories and wholesale prices, with refined products potentially reacting faster than crude because refiners and distributors often hold smaller storage buffers.
Longer voyages also reduce the tanker fleet’s effective capacity. The ships remain in service, but each one spends more time completing a voyage and is unavailable for other cargoes during that period. A shift in Saudi export routes could therefore tighten VLCC availability for Gulf producers and increase demand for Suezmax and Aframax tankers serving Mediterranean and European trades.
These pressures can compound: longer routes absorb ships; terminal transfers consume time and capacity; and canal queues make delivery schedules less predictable. The market effect would depend on the scale and duration of disruption, as well as available capacity elsewhere. The source doesn’t quantify those outcomes, but its central operational point is clear: routing changes can constrain delivered supply even when production continues.
Export resilience depends on the route to customers
Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline remains a major strategic asset because it creates an alternative to moving all exports through the Persian Gulf. But its value depends on access to shipping lanes after crude reaches Yanbu. Suez and SUMED can provide a fallback for some volumes, though the limitations described here make them an incomplete replacement for an open southern Red Sea route.
For energy markets, the practical measure of resilience is not just how many barrels can be produced or moved across a country. It is how reliably those barrels can be loaded, transported and delivered to buyers. Any prolonged disruption around Bab el-Mandeb would make that logistics test central to Saudi exports, with voyage duration, terminal capacity and tanker availability shaping how much oil reaches customers and when.
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