Morning Highlights: Fire Contained Near Ras Tanura, Saudi Arabia’s Biggest Export Terminal, as Brent Reverses Early Losses

Tuesday, October 27, 2026 | 6:30 AM ET

Brent (December) $116.12 | WTI (December) $102.45

Brent +$0.31 (+0.3%), WTI +$0.69 (+0.7%), both reversing early declines of about 1%. Brent is up about 13% so far this month. A fire near Ras Tanura was contained early Tuesday after an attack in the region, per a person with knowledge of the matter, and the extent of damage is unclear. Saudi Arabia said its air defenses destroyed three Houthi ballistic missiles launched toward the eastern region.

Bottom Line

The Ras Tanura fire matters because of where Saudi exports have moved. Bloomberg reports the blaze broke out in the early hours of Tuesday near Aramco-operated facilities, was contained, and that damage is not yet known. Aramco and the Energy Ministry have not commented, and the account rests on one unnamed source. Bloomberg does not say what caused the fire, and the missile interceptions in the eastern region are reported separately, so the two shouldn’t be linked yet. Ras Tanura has the loading facilities, the kingdom’s biggest refinery and a large tank farm, and with Aramco sending more crude out of the Gulf again, it carries more of the export load than it did when Yanbu was the main route. Kpler had Ras Tanura loadings at about 3.6 million bpd in September. Houthi attacks in recent weeks have hit Aramco’s headquarters, a major oil field and refineries in the western region, and this is the first reported incident near the main Gulf terminal.

The diplomatic signal is thin. Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan held talks with Iranian officials in Tehran on Monday, and Iranian state media said the four countries agreed to continue talks aimed at strengthening cooperation on peace and security. That is a commitment to keep talking, not a framework, and Saudi Arabia is meeting Iran while the Houthis, who are Iran-aligned, keep attacking the kingdom. The market read it as modestly easing the risk of a wider supply shock, which is why prices dipped early. The renewed Houthi attacks and the Ras Tanura fire reversed that within hours. Bloomberg notes both the US and Iran have held off major military operations in recent weeks, and traders are weighing a resumption.

Flow data is not telling a consistent story. ANZ Research said Gulf crude exports fell for a fourth straight week and Hormuz flows were only about 60% of normal, with global distillate inventories nearly 5% below their five-year average. It described stress across supply, logistics, inventories and refining. That is lower than Kpler’s figure last week of about 82% of pre-war Hormuz flows for October to date, and Bloomberg says traffic has reached almost pre-war levels. The measures and time periods differ, and ships running without transponders complicate all of them, so none of the figures can be taken as final. Still, ANZ’s weekly readings suggest the October recovery may be fading as attacks pile up.