larry johnson speaks about oil and the saudi's; 

 

For most of this war, Saudi Arabia has been the shock absorber of the world oil market. When Hormuz closed, Riyadh pushed crude west through the East-West pipeline to Yanbu on the Red Sea and kept at least part of its exports moving. That bypass is now under attack. Ansar Allah has seized islands at the mouth of the Red Sea, declared a “maritime ban” on Saudi shipping and claimed strikes on Saudi airports, and in September drones knocked the East-West pipeline largely out of service. Riyadh blamed that strike on Iranian-backed militias in Iraq. On October 4 a pumping station at Khurais, east of Riyadh, was hit for the first time and the pipeline stopped again.

Karl Miller, whose earlier assessment of the global fuel emergency I have drawn on before, has just completed a new analysis of what this means for Saudi Arabia and for the world. His conclusion is stark: the Gulf’s energy system will take far longer and cost far more to rebuild than anyone in Washington is admitting, and Saudi Arabia can no longer be counted on to cover the gap. Here are his key findings.

1. The bypass is the weak point

Miller’s starting point is that a pipeline is not a pipe. It is a connected system of pumping stations, power supplies, controls, storage tanks and loading berths, and it is only as strong as its weakest link. The September damage to the East-West pumping stations, the October interruption at Khurais, a fire at the Riyadh energy complex and the disruption of Saudi aviation all hit that system at different points. The pipeline has been partly restored, but Miller warns that permanent equipment losses remain unresolved. Yanbu can be shut down without a single bomb hitting the port: if crude stops arriving, tankers stop loading.........more..........