RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Energy said the East-West Pipeline was targeted in the Madinah region on Monday, and the attack set off a limited fire that emergency teams put out.
The ministry said no one was injured or killed, and the pipeline kept running. Its operations were not affected.
The ministry said emergency and technical teams started work right after the strike. They secured the area and verified its safety, working from the ministry’s approved emergency plans.
The statement named no attacker and did not say how the pipeline was hit. Saudi authorities have not publicly blamed any group for Monday’s strike.
The line matters well beyond Madinah. The pipeline is long — about 1,200 kilometers, or 745 miles, from Saudi Arabia’s east to Yanbu, on the Red Sea coast. About 4 million barrels of crude a day now move through it, Reuters said — roughly 4% of global supply, shifted there after the fighting disrupted oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz.
Reuters reported that the pipeline has shielded Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, from the worst of the wartime shutdown of the strait, which has cut into exports from its neighbors.
The pipeline has been hit before. It was shut down for several days in September after drone attacks that Saudi Arabia blamed on Iraqi militias, Reuters reported.
Monday’s strike came as attacks on Saudi oil sites have picked up again. Yemen’s Houthi group claimed a strike on Sunday that damaged an Aramco office building in Riyadh, and Saudi officials said early Tuesday that the capital’s deputy governor had inspected the building and ordered support for Aramco employees.
Washington is still working the diplomatic track. President Donald Trump met Qatar’s prime minister in Washington on Monday, with the Iran war at the top of the agenda.