By Trixie Yap, Nidhi Verma and Florence Tan
SINGAPORE/NEW DELHI, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia has restarted operations at its East-West Pipeline and could resume exports from the Red Sea port of Yanbu later on Tuesday, three sources briefed on the matter said.
Drone attacks forced Saudi Arabia to shut its East-West Pipeline on September 13, halting crude loadings at the kingdom's Yanbu port.
The resumption of supplies on Tuesday helped to drive selling on global oil markets, traders said. Brent crude futures fell by more than $2 a barrel to its lowest since September 8. [O/R]
Since disruption to oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz following the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, OPEC's leading oil exporter has been using the pipeline to reroute around 4 million barrels per day — around 4% of global supply — to Yanbu.
The pipeline was pumping at a low rate after its restart, two of the sources said. State oil firm Saudi Aramco was seeking to increase the pumping rate to 4 million barrels per day, one of them said, without saying when this could be achieved.
Saudi Aramco did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The pipeline will resume crude supply to Aramco refineries located on the Red Sea coast, one of the sources said, adding that one cargo was scheduled to load at Yanbu later on Tuesday. The person said it would be bound for China.
Another two trading sources said traders were getting ready for Saudi oil loadings by moving tankers to Egypt's Mediterranean Port Said for ship-to-ship transfers and also to Sidi Kerir.
(Reporting by Nidhi Verma in New Delhi, Florence Tan and Trixie Yap in Singapore; Additional reporting by Ahmad Ghaddar and Enes Tunagur in London; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise and Barbara Lewis)
