The Yanbu door is still shut. The Oman workaround took some heat out of the tape
Reuters reported Wednesday that oil prices fell after Saudi Arabia offered additional crude cargoes to Asian refiners through ship-to-ship transfers off Oman's Sohar port. WTI settled $3.40 lower at $102.43 a barrel. Brent settled $2.92 lower at $105.83. That gives back most of Tuesday's $3-plus rally, when Yanbu loadings stopped and some late-September Europe cargoes were cancelled.
Yanbu remains the Red Sea outlet after the East-West pipeline strikes. Reuters said the loading suspension is still in place. UBS analyst Giovanni Staunovo told Reuters that Gulf export talk eased fears the disruption would be larger. Visible Hormuz traffic was four commodity vessels on Tuesday, down from seven a day earlier and well below a 10-day average of 18, preliminary shipping data showed.
The EIA said U.S. crude stocks fell about 640,000 barrels last week. A Reuters poll had looked for a 1.62 million barrel draw. Gasoline and distillate stocks rose. John Kilduff at Again Capital told Reuters the product builds were bearish next to a flattening crude draw.
No Canadian listed issuer posted a release on the Oman workaround. The names that feel this first are still the oilsands book: Canadian Natural, Suncor, Imperial, and Cenovus. This is tape context. It does not change a 2026 production guide, the Ksi Lisims HOA, or Enbridge's Monday Line 5 restart note.