Saudi Arabia targets 10 million barrels a day of alternate oil routes

Saudi Arabia aims within two to three years to move as much as 10 million barrels of crude a day through pipelines to export points outside the Gulf—about 40% more than the East-West pipeline’s current 7 million-barrel-a-day capacity. This is not a plan to produce 10 million extra barrels; it is a plan to add routes that can divert oil from eastern fields to Red Sea terminals when normal shipping is constrained. Officials say the work would include upgrades to pumping stations and the wider pipeline network, while temporarily converting a domestic gas line could add 1.2 million barrels a day within weeks. The value is redundancy: spare transport capacity can keep deliveries moving when a key shipping route becomes unreliable.