Two Exits For Saudi Oil And Both Are In The Attack Record

On Tuesday night, six sources told Reuters they heard loud booms near the headquarters of Saudi Aramco in Dhahran, four said an evacuation order went out, and one said the building was struck, though not whether by a missile or by falling debris. Aramco did not comment.

The Saudi Press Agency described a limited fire and no casualties, as reported by The National, and the Saudi-led coalition said fragments of an intercepted missile fell on a residential area.

On Wednesday, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree claimed on X that his forces had fired ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones at the Dhahran facility and at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, causing destruction and fires, and said airports and oil facilities would remain targets. He told shipping companies and the people who work at those sites to stay away. None of that has been independently verified, and this letter attributes no attack to any party beyond what that party itself claims.

Brent settled on Tuesday at $105.69, down 0.9 percent, and WTI at $94.14, up 0.4 percent, according to Bloomberg. Overnight Brent traded at $106.58 at 00:30 GMT, as Al Jazeera reported. That is an intraday price and will have moved.

Dhahran is not the only name on the list. Bloomberg reported that the Jazan refinery has been shut since an earlier attack, that a key Red Sea oil export port was targeted in this round, and that the cross-country pipeline, Aramco’s main route to market, was shut for a time last month after an attack.

Aramco has not said what, if anything, changed in its output, and none of the reports this letter reviewed describe a change.

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Before the war, about 125 large commercial vessels a day crossed Hormuz, according to U.S. Navy figures as reported, and Kpler put average crude flow at 17.1 million barrels a day. In an early October note, Kpler said crude exports from the Gulf of Oman and the Red Sea together had reached 6.7 million barrels a day, about twice the prewar level.

The strait itself is a contested number. Al Jazeera, citing Kpler, put 11 October at 2.9 million barrels, the lowest of the month, while CENTCOM said more than 19 million barrels of crude shipped with American assistance on Monday. This letter cannot reconcile them.

The pipeline’s design capacity is 7 million barrels a day.

On 6 October, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said at a forum in Manama that flow had returned to 5.8 million barrels a day. Kpler had put August flow at about 2 million, and drone strikes in early September, blamed on an Iraqi militia, had shut the line for five or six days, according to Al Jazeera. The minister’s figure is a statement. It is not a tanker count.

The attacks on the water keep their own ledger. UKMTO recorded 15 between 6 and 14 October, 11 of them in the last four days, and on Tuesday a container ship and a tanker were hit by unknown projectiles. Iran’s IRGC claimed on Monday that it struck a supertanker running with its transponder off, a claim that has not been independently confirmed, and Iran’s security chief Mohsen Rezaei claimed five or six vessels were being hit every night, far above any count this letter could find.

On one side, a minister reporting 5.8 million barrels through a pipeline built for 7. On the other, a spokesman telling the people who work beside Saudi oil to leave.

AAA put the national average for regular gasoline at about $4.35 a gallon on 13 October, $1.27 above a year ago, and said this is the first year the national average has been above $4 in October, as reported by a Pennsylvania outlet quoting AAA. AAA’s own site shows a slightly lower number for 14 October, so the figure is about, not exact.

The inflation print arrives at 8:30 this morning. A preview published by FXStreet puts the consensus for September at 0.6 percent on the month and 3.6 percent on the year, against 3.4 percent in August, with core at 0.2 percent on the month and 2.5 percent on the year. Yesterday this letter printed a 3.7 percent consensus from one tracker; the preview this morning says 3.6, and that is the figure to use.

Stocks barely registered the night. On Tuesday the Dow closed at 51,670.10, down 0.35 percent, the S&P 500 at 7,805.45, down 0.02 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite at 27,204.38, down 0.15 percent, per TheStreet and The Motley Fool. The 10-year Treasury yield on Tuesday is reported at 5.215 percent by Saxo and 5.24 percent by The Motley Fool, and this letter cannot reconcile them.

On the Fed, the CME FedWatch tool put the odds of a rate increase at the October meeting at about 20 percent, according to FXStreet, and New York Fed President John Williams said one more increase this year is appropriate. Those odds are market probabilities. They are not Fed statements.

This dossier wasn’t meant for everyone.