Satellite images gathered by Bloomberg show supertankers with capacity for 14 million barrels at Saudi Arabia's Gulf export terminals over the weekend, the highest tanker count observed since at least June, according to data compiled from the European Union's Sentinel-2 satellite.
Source: Javier BlasHowever, as OilPrice notes, overall Hormuz traffic kept falling over the same weekend, nonetheless. Just a dozen commodity vessels crossed the strait, down from 35 a week earlier, and Thursday's crossings totaled four tankers against a 10-day moving average of 16, Kpler data cited by Reuters showed.
Saudi Arabia moved crude through the strait at 2.9 million barrels a day over the past six days, JPMorgan said in a Friday note, calling the kingdom's shift "the most notable pivot" among Gulf producers.
On September 11, drone strikes launched from Iraq shut down Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline, also known as Petroline, which normally carries as much as 7 million barrels a day across 1,200 kilometers from Eastern Province fields to the Yanbu terminal on the Red Sea. The attack took 4-5 million barrels a day of that capacity offline, with total Saudi crude loadings falling from 7.5 million bpd in January and February to about 2.1 million barrels a day by mid-September, a decline of more than 70%.
US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said September 15 the pipeline would restart within days, but an industry analyst told Al-Monitor pump stations were destroyed in the strike and full restoration could take six weeks or more.
Yemen's Houthi movement claimed cruise missile, ballistic missile and drone strikes on Riyadh and on Aramco facilities at Yanbu overnight September 18-19, and Saudi Arabia confirmed the Houthis targeted civilian infrastructure at the port where the East-West pipeline terminates. The Riyadh missile was intercepted and Saudi authorities reported no casualties or damage from either strike, but the attempt puts Yanbu, the kingdom's primary outlet since the Hormuz freeze, under renewed threat.
Aramco pipes crude to its Ras Tanura terminal on the Persian Gulf, ships it on smaller vessels to the Gulf of Oman, and transfers it to larger tankers there, a routing it is using to move about 60 million barrels loaded at Ras Tanura for September and October delivery, mainly to Chinese and South Korean refiners. Gulf exports have rebounded to an average of 1 million to 1.5 million barrels a day, roughly in line with August levels.
Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 18:50Authored by Chris Summers via The Epoch Times,
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has rejected the claims of some artificial intelligence researchers that the technology could wipe out humanity, calling the arguments "doomsday narratives."
Huang said in a Sept. 17 interview with CBS News that predictions made by former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon and Anthropic's alignment science lead, Evan Hubinger, were not grounded in science.
Coxon said in a Sept. 9 post on X that the "people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade."
Hubinger said he agreed it could end humanity.
"Jacob is correct here - We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans! I personally think it is >10% within the next decade," he wrote.
Huang told CBS's senior business and technology correspondent Jo Ling Kent on Thursday that 2030 won't be the end of the world.
"There is zero percent chance that's going to be the end of the world," he said. "Scaring people is unnecessary. It is irresponsible."
U.S. President Donald Trump said in a Sept. 14 post on Truth Social that the United States needed no AI guardrails and that it already had significant criminal and regulatory power over Big Tech companies.
"There is a SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers, and the only one that is happy about it is China," Trump wrote.
Nvidia CEO Agrees With TrumpHuang said on Thursday that he agreed with the U.S. president's view on legislation and regulation.
"Before we come up with new laws and new regulations, let's apply the current laws and current regulations," Huang said.
"There are all kinds of laws and regulations. ... You have cybersecurity unauthorized entry, you have damage liabilities, all kinds of liabilities associated with cybersecurity. All kinds of liabilities associated with products. ... My point is apply those first, don't let this doomsday narrative cause someone to relieve them of the laws that currently exist."
Huang has been invited to a dinner at the White House on Sept. 24, when Trump will host Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Trump has said AI will be on the agenda during his meeting with Xi.
ChinaHuang told CBS that Xi wanted China to benefit from AI.
"They want China to prosper, just as we want America to prosper," Huang said.
Nvidia manufactures specialized H200 chips that power large language models (LLMs) used by AI agents to synthesize information.
Trump said in a Dec. 8 post on Truth Social that he had told Xi the United States would allow exports of Nvidia H200 chips to approved customers in China "under conditions that allow for continued strong National Security."
In July 2025, Nvidia restarted exports of H20 graphics processing units (GPUs) to China after U.S. regulators approved it.
Nvidia is now worth more than $5 trillion, making it the most valuable company on the planet. The company manufactures many of its chips in Taiwan, but last year, it opened a semiconductor fabrication plant in Phoenix, Ariz.
Last month, Taiwanese authorities indicted nine people, including a senior partner manager at Nvidia's Taiwan unit, for allegedly taking part in a scheme to export servers with advanced Nvidia chips to China.
In June, Taiwan-born Huang told Nvidia shareholders that attempts to build artificial intelligence data centers with smuggled chips were a "dead end," because the company provides no support or repairs for such products.
"National security is first and foremost," Huang said. "Where commercial opportunities conflict with U.S. national security, national security comes first."
Tyler Durden Mon, 09/21/2026 - 18:25