胡塞袭击致沙特东西管道关闭，油价与旅游业承压

This is a parallel fighting that is happening in the midst of an already existing war between the United States and Iran. It's picked up over the past couple of weeks or so. How is it affecting those big, ambitious plans that Saudi Arabia had laid out about a decade ago now? Well, first of all, just a little bit of background on, uh, how things have shifted in Saudi Arabia between the Arabian Yemen. Uh, the kingdom was in fact spared, uh, from the worst of fighting, uh, early in this conflict that began between Iran and the US.

Uh, but as you said, over the last few weeks, especially over the last ten days, uh, Houthis started staging, uh, attacks on a near daily basis, uh, on Saudi Arabia. And that resulted in, uh, obviously the closure of what, not the attacks by horses, but, uh, in the meantime, another set of attacks, uh, by another Iran backed group, uh, operating out of Iraq, uh, resulted in a closure of the east west pipeline that, uh, Saudi Arabia, uh, was using to bypass the Strait of Hormuz.

So what happens here is that the risk extends beyond oil. Saudi Arabia has already invested very heavily on things like tourism and entertainment, and that's another area where we are seeing risk, basically. On the one hand, you have a, uh, your ability to export oil from the Red sea is being curtailed because of these attacks. And then you have the attacks in places like such as Al ULA, that's, uh, posing as a risk to the tourism industry that central to, uh, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, uh, economic plans to transform the economy a bit.

Let's talk about I mean, you focus on that a little bit, but, um, the impact of this closure of the East-West pipeline in Saudi Arabia, as you mentioned, Saudi had resorted to that route to to avoid the Strait of Hormuz. Can the impact of that closure on or be catastrophic for oil markets, if it were to go on for long? Of course, we're seeing Brent crude prices dropping today, but we're talking about a long term impact of this.

Well, uh, I think we've already seen some of that impact with Brent. Uh, at over $180. Now, obviously today it has hit some kind of a speed bump, uh, at least according to traders. But on the other hand, yes, this is, um, uh, this is what Saudi Arabia was relying on to export much of its oil after, uh, the problems at the Strait of Hormuz began in February and March. Uh, and now with the Houthi attacks, uh, both on, uh, Saudi energy sites and, uh, Houthis, including influence, uh, over the Bab el Mandeb, which is another critical choke point for global shipping at the southern tip of, uh, the Red sea are now putting at risk, uh, Saudi exports to the rest of the world.

The East-West pipeline that we already mentioned is considered is estimated to be offline for the next several weeks, possibly 6 or 7 weeks. And this comes after Saudi Arabia already pushed its oil production to the lowest level since 1998. That was as of August. So yes, this is a clear, massive risk to oil markets as well as to the kingdom.