Damage inflicted on Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline last week, along with continuing strikes on oil infrastructure and contested control over a key waterway, threaten to elevate what had been a shipping crisis into a broader disruption of oil.

"ripped from the headlines"

Oil prices fall as Saudi Arabia reportedly offers more crude via Hormuz after pipeline attack

Oil prices fell Thursday as Saudi Arabia shifts some crude exports through the Strait of Hormuz to compensate for the closure of a key pipeline, easing market fears that the outage will cause another major disruption to global supplies.

Brent futures, the international benchmark, traded 2.6% lower at $103.05 per barrel. West Texas Intermediate crude briefly dipped below $100. The U.S. benchmark was last down 1.8% to $100.55. U.S. crude oil has erased most of its gains for the week but is up 17% for the month.

cnbc.com - Oil prices today wti brent hormuz iran war

The market flies, and oil drops, because someone said, a Saudi said, they would push more oil through the Strait. If it was that easy to push more through the Strait, it would be done already, and global supplies would not be so tight.

“They will need to replace piping, valves, all the electrical stuff,” he said. “It is not like you can just go to Costco and pick that stuff up off-the-shelf.”

The pump seal company I used to work for provided all the seals and accessories for an Iraqi chemical plant near Basrah, known as "SODIC". Basrah was pretty much on the front line of the Iran-Iraq war. One day, the seal company's rep in New Jersy, who had sold the job to the engineering firm that designed the plant, called me. I said "Hey Frank. SODIC just called. The Iranians bombed the daylights out of the plant. They want you to go over there and work up a repair parts list." I had him going pretty good for a minute.

Back then, if someone ordered a seal with super common materials, for a super common Goulds or Duriorn ANSI pump, it could probably be delivered out of stock. Anything else took about 8 weeks. I don't know what the lead time for a new pump was, as the company I worked for did not build pumps. It is reasonable to assume ARAMCO has some spares inventory on hand. But, as with Patriot missiles, repeated attacked on pump stations will burn through their on hand spares inventory.

Steve