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Saudis Cancel September Crude Cargoes To Europe As East-West Pipeline Shutdown Deepens Energy Crisis

Zero Rss
3 weeks 2 days ago
Saudis Cancel September Crude Cargoes To Europe As East-West Pipeline Shutdown Deepens Energy Crisis

Summary:

  • Saudis Cancel September-Loading Crude Cargoes to Europe
  • Europeans are paying between $9-$11 per gallon for diesel amid Global Refining Crisis 
  • Saudi Oil Routes Narrow: Kingdom Eyes Hormuz Export Surge After Pipeline Attack
Saudis Cancel September-Loading Crude Cargoes to Europe

"Refining is super short.   Between Europe's woes, Russias war on Ukraine and a drop in refined products from the Arabian Gulf its really bad. As many of my amazing followers showed yesterday… Europeans are paying between $9-$11 per gallon for diesel," CNBC's Brian Sullivan wrote on X. 

Refining is super short. Between Europe’s woes, Russias war on Ukraine and a drop in refined products from the Arabian Gulf its really bad.

As many of my amazing followers showed yesterday… Europeans are paying between $9-$11 per gallon for diesel. https://t.co/TG0NmfDkVE

— Brian Sullivan (@SullyCNBC) September 15, 2026

Europe's energy supply outlook is deteriorating after Reuters reported Tuesday that Saudi Arabia had notified some European refiners that their September-loading crude cargoes would be canceled following the shutdown of its critical East-West pipeline after a drone attack. 

Beyond a diesel shortage in the West, Europeans are also dealing with low natural gas stockpiles heading into the Northern Hemisphere winter, with prices reaching their highest level since December 2022.

Saudi Oil Routes Narrow: Kingdom Eyes Hormuz Export Surge After Pipeline Attack

Middle East tensions remain high, with Brent crude futures trading around $105 a barrel and US diesel crack spreads near $110 a barrel amid an ongoing global refining crisis. Disruptions to Russian fuel production from the war in Ukraine are compounding supply constraints across the Middle East.

Saudi Arabia's options for maintaining exports have significantly narrowed following a drone attack that shut down its critical East-West pipeline last week. With that alternative pipeline route disrupted, possibly for up to a month, and shipping risks elevated around the Arabian Peninsula, Riyadh is seeking to move more crude through the highly contested Strait of Hormuz.

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright told reporters Monday that the US Navy is escorting a large number of vessels through the Oman shipping corridor in the Hormuz chokepoint. Those escorts could support increased Saudi shipments and bolster Riyadh's confidence in US naval protection. 

Bloomberg reported that Riyadh has already begun ramping up crude transits through Hormuz. The report cited sources, and the kingdom did not confirm it.

Saudi exports had recovered toward 4 million barrels a day in early September, with about 1 million moving through Hormuz and the balance through Yanbu on the Red Sea. That leaves the kingdom facing a substantial export shortfall.

Riyadh has two options right now:

  1. Restore East-West pipeline pumping infrastructure in a timely manner; or
  2. Sharply increase Gulf shipments (with US naval protection). 

Geospatial intelligence shows high-resolution satellite imagery of the aftermath of the drone attack that destroyed pumping infrastructure. 

BREAKING: New high-resolution satellite imagery shows the pumping station on Saudi Arabia's East-West oil pipeline burned out end to end, with the entire process area blackened and crude oil that escaped the site pooled across the desert beyond the perimeter, per Vantor imagery. https://t.co/DFJAplGNcC pic.twitter.com/uQEdn2YVFe

— The Hormuz Letter (@HormuzLetter) September 14, 2026

 "The pipeline, with capacity of 7mb/d, had played an important role in re-routing oil away from the Strait of Hormuz, and the impact of the pipeline's closure on Red Sea exports (combined with recent Houthi efforts to disrupt Red Sea flows) will continue to support oil prices for the foreseeable future," UBS energy expert Dominic Ellis told clients. 

Wright joined Bloomberg TV to calm energy markets and said pipeline operations could resume "very soon," yet no timeline was given.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright says Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline will be back up and running “very soon.” pic.twitter.com/vengmvxLG7

— Clash Report (@clashreport) September 14, 2026

Meanwhile, AP News reported that flows through the pipeline could resume in three to five weeks.

Riyadh's most immediate response is to ramp up Hormuz shipments with what appears to be US naval protection, but tanker availability remains another big problem. Also, tanker freight rates from Saudi Gulf ports to China topped $1 million at the end of last week.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/15/2026 - 11:26
Tyler Durden

Everybody Involved In The "AI Extinction" Conversation Is Talking Their Own Book

Zero Rss
3 weeks 2 days ago
Everybody Involved In The "AI Extinction" Conversation Is Talking Their Own Book

By Benjamin Picton, senior market strategist at Rabobank

Coalition of the Exceedingly Reluctant

US 10-year bond yields topped 5% on Monday, and again on Tuesday, as crude oil prices continued to move higher and overnight index swaps implied a higher chance of a Fed rate hike on Wednesday. The OIS market now has 24.9bps priced in for Wednesday’s FOMC meeting – suggesting that traders view a Fed hike this week as a near certainty.

US and European equities were broadly lower on Monday as markets digested the implications of tech CEOs banding together to plead for regulation to slow the pace of development of frontier AI models. While Darion Amodei, Elon Musk and Sam Altman were saying “please sir, can I have a bit less” we saw dissent from Mark Zuckerberg and Jensen Huang with the former saying that AI development needed to be speeded up and the latter telling President Trump that “we’re not going to let that happen” in reference to an AI slowdown.

There is a sense here that everybody involved in this conversation is talking their own book. As noted here yesterday, CEOs of frontier model developers are being criticized for seeking regulatory moats to protect their own margins. Meta already enjoys a huge moat from network effects and distribution incumbency and would likely see a benefit to operating margins from lower inference costs. NVIDIA wants to keep the hyper scaling arms race going so it can keep on selling chips.

Trump, meanwhile, views AI as a national security issue where the US cannot afford to take its foot off the gas pedal. This sentiment was recently echoed by Australia’s putative Prime-Minister-in-waiting, Andrew Hastie, who said that failure to develop indigenous frontier AI models will leave Australia as a supplicant, rather than a sovereign state. ECB President Lagarde said much the same thing as she warned against relying on US models: “There is nothing inherently bad about importing rather than producing new technologies... But there are reasons why artificial intelligence is ‘special’”.

So, to refashion Trump’s earlier warning that “if you don’t have steel, you don’t have a country”: “if you don’t have domestic AI capabilities, you don’t have a country”.

While the new economy of AI preoccupied markets for most of yesterday, the much-neglected old economy continued to serve up inconvenient reminders of the importance of real production to 21st century life. Entirely predictable attacks on the Saudi East-West pipeline, reports that damage to the pipeline could take months to repair, and the sense that even if it is repaired it could easily be attacked again ensured that oil markets remained bid. Reports from Iran’s Fars news agency that an oil tanker exploded after colliding with a mine in Omani waters did the same. The spread between dated brent and the front future has blown out to the highest levels since mid April, suggesting further tightness in physical markets as refiners scramble to secure feedstock.

That dynamic won’t be helped by news that the US is approaching the end of its program to release supply from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Reserves are sitting at their lowest levels since the 1980s when it was first being filled and there has been an ongoing conversation within oil circles that stock levels may be approaching minimum levels beyond which the structural integrity of the salt caverns where it is stored are threatened. The rundown in US stocks and soaring gasoline prices has invigorated speculation that the administration could seek to impose export bans on certain oil products ahead of the midterm elections in November – a prospect that Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum hosed down by saying that it wouldn’t help to lower prices.

A meeting was supposed to be held between officials from Iran, Iraq and the GCC nations yesterday in Oman to finalize an agreement to restore traffic to the Strait of Hormuz. That was postponed as parties reportedly failed to reach agreement, which is no surprise considering that the US will not allow Iranian oil through its blockade and Iran will not allow anyone else’s oil through the strait while the blockade remains in place. For now, Iran appears content to up the ante against the US and its allies ahead of the midterm elections by restricting flows through the Red Sea and, especially, through the Bab el-Mandeb. Will Uncle Sam say “uncle!”?

Escalation in the Bab el-Mandeb means that Asia and Oceania are once again ground zero for energy market risk. With that context established, Australia’s Energy Minister confirmed today that he will travel to Saudi Arabia next week in an effort to shore up energy supplies for the months ahead. Reaching agreement with Saudi officials is likely to be the easy part, actually moving product to market may prove somewhat harder.

Given that South Korea is reportedly reconsidering initial opposition to deploying its military to assist in the Strait of Hormuz, and UK PM Burnham’s indications within the last 24 hours that the UK may seek to support Saudi Arabia in its fight against the Houthis in Yemen, might Australia also be about to join a coalition of the exceedingly reluctant? If so, Australia’s PM Albanese would likely confront the same issue as the UK’s Burnham: a shortage of available ships with sufficient warfighting capability.

Sticking with the theme of neglected corners of the old-economy throwing up problems for western policymakers, news emerged yesterday that efforts to restart the blast furnace at Australia’s only-remaining long products steel mill had failed. In effect, this means that Australia is now completely import dependent for certain steel products with important industrial *and military* applications that in earlier times it was largely self-sufficient in courtesy of vast mineral and energy endowments that provided all the necessary ingredients, and the cheap power, to produce the outputs. Those natural advantages have wilted under rising energy prices and competition from imports following deregulatory moves and the removal of tariff protection in the 1980s and ‘90s.

Speaking of competition from imports, new data released by China’s Bureau of National Statistics confirmed that in August retail sales were – once again- weaker than expected while industrial production was – once again – stronger than expected and house prices – once again – fell. Taken together with news that China’s unemployment rate in August rose to its highest level since March, the overall picture continues to be once of weak domestic demand and very strong production, creating a large exportable surplus that is one half of the structural trade imbalance that lies at the heart of the unfolding geopolitical upheaval that we are now living through.

While we may hope that next week, or next month, or next election cycle will bring calmer waters from a geopolitical perspective, it is probably the case that until something changes on those structural imbalances, nothing changes.

In the meantime, got oil?

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/15/2026 - 11:20
Tyler Durden

Democrat Judge Rules Trump's FEMA Staffing Cut Violated The Law

Zero Rss
3 weeks 2 days ago
Democrat Judge Rules Trump's FEMA Staffing Cut Violated The Law

Shock of all shocks - a California judge on Friday ruled that the Trump administration violated the law when it ordered  the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to cut its workforce from 23,000 to 11,500 by the end of the 2026 fiscal year.

A resident enters a FEMA's improvised station to attend claims by local residents affected by floods following the passing of Hurricane Helene, in Marion, N.C., on Oct. 5, 2024. Eduardo Munoz/File Photo / Reuters

"The statutory language is clear," wrote U.S. District Judge Susan Illston (Clinton), who reasoned that FEMA was given control over all of its functions after the massive SNAFU surrounding Hurricane Katrina - including its personnel and administrative authority. Screw chain of command, eh? While FEMA falls under the Department of Homeland Security, DHS isn't allowed to substantially reduce FEMA's authority, responsibilities, functions, or anything that might threaten the ability to conduct emergency-management missions.

As the Epoch Times notes further, a draft report that was leaked in December 2025 showed a recommendation to create a new "FEMA 2.0" by cutting FEMA's staffing roughly in half and pushing more of FEMA's functions out to states and local governments, the court document states.

The court criticized the December 2025 staffing plan that projected a revamped FEMA with 11,383 employees. Illston wrote that the figure was "arbitrary and capricious" and "appears as if pulled from thin air."

The judge also questioned the process of coming up with the reduction to 11,383 employees by Karen Evans, the acting FEMA administrator at that time.

"In other words, rather than reflecting reasoned decision making to reach the 11,383 annual staffing plan figure submitted to DHS, the record indicates that Evans submitted the 11,383 figure first and then worked backwards to figure out how to support it," she wrote.

Homeland Security and FEMA didn't respond to requests for comment.

The judge did not immediately determine the remedy. The unions have sought reinstatement and back pay for separated employees and an injunction barring implementation of the staffing plan.

Illston ordered the parties to negotiate a solution. If they cannot agree, they must submit a joint statement identifying the remaining disputes by Oct. 9.

In January 2025, President Donald Trump issued an order to create a council to review FEMA, citing concerns over political bias within the agency.

The order states that FEMA's handling of Hurricane Helene and other recent disasters has prompted the need to "drastically improve" the agency's "efficacy, priorities, and competence," and evaluate whether the agency's bureaucracy hinders its ability to respond effectively.

In addition, the order states there were "serious concerns of political bias" within FEMA, and that resources had been used to support missions beyond the agency's scope, including activities that support illegal aliens.

Trump has been critical of FEMA's response in North Carolina after flooding from to Hurricane Helene.

"FEMA spent tens of millions of dollars in Democrat areas, disobeying orders, but left the people of North Carolina high and dry," Trump posted on Truth Social.

He said at the time that FEMA under the Biden administration had been slow and ineffective, adding that it would be more effective to have individual states handle storms.

Aldgra Fredly contributed to this report.

Tyler Durden Tue, 09/15/2026 - 11:00
Tyler Durden

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