PAYNE INSTITUTE COMMENTARY SERIES: COMMENTARY

By Mikhail Zhizhin and Morgan Bazilian

September 13, 2026

(this version refines our earlier analysis, 9/11/2026)

VIIRS Nightfire detected eight infrared emitters along the East–West corridor on the night of 10 September. Most of those locations coincide with existing flare pits used for emergency gas burn-off, not new pipeline ruptures. Estimated burn-off that night was an order of magnitude higher than under normal pipeline operation. High-resolution imagery later confirmed fire damage at two pumping stations (Hendricks, J. Satellite images show fire damage at Saudi pipeline pumping station. Global Recon. https://globalrecon.net/dispatch/satellites-detect-heat-at-six-sites-along-saudi-pipeline-corridor).

On the evening of 10 September 2026, Marhelm reported that unnamed diplomatic channels were describing “catastrophic damage” to Saudi Arabia’s East–West crude pipeline, later specifying “at least 8 places” and citing prior accuracy on Fujairah, Abqaiq and tanker incidents[1]. Those claims were combined with @HormuzLetter’s earlier Sentinel-3 imagery of a ~100 km smoke plume southeast of Medina and NASA FIRMS detections (clustered anomalies, FRP >70 MW, multi-hour burn) [2]. @HormuzLetter then posted the widely copied “BREAKING … 8 locations … diplomatic channels” wording.

On September 11, 2026, Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Energy confirmed that the East–West Pipeline had been subjected to multiple attacks in the Riyadh and Madinah regions on the morning of September 10. The pipeline was shut down as a precaution, several injuries were reported, and emergency teams began securing and assessing the affected sections. Subsequent reporting said Saudi authorities had identified the weapons as drones launched from Iraq. These official statements replaced the initially unverified reports circulating on social media with confirmation that multiple sections of this strategically important pipeline had been attacked [3],[4].

We examined the affected corridor using near-real-time VIIRS Nightfire (VNF) [5] observations from Suomi NPP, NOAA-20, and NOAA-21, together with NASA Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS) thermal anomalies [6]. All VNF and FIRMS detections in the event window were first clustered independently, without using known flare locations as seeds. The resulting clusters were then compared with the MYC25Q4 multi-year catalog of persistent infrared emitters [7], and two months of earlier VNF observations were retrieved for each location.

Figure 1. Overview of thermal activity detected along the Madinah-region section of Saudi Arabia’s East–West Pipeline. The September 10 detections form a sequence of discrete thermal sites along the pipeline corridor. VNF supplies nighttime multispectral observations, while the FIRMS points provide an independent record based on fire-radiative-power retrievals.

Eight distinct thermal sites

The joint spatial analysis resolved eight thermal clusters, numbered C01 through C08 from west to east. This agrees with the number of affected locations described in the initial reports, although satellite thermal detections alone cannot establish that every cluster represents a separate physical impact on the pipeline.

The interpretation is more complex than a simple sequence of eight new pipeline fires. Some of the strongest signals, particularly C05 and several of the eastern locations, coincide with or are close to previously observed flaring infrastructure. Their elevated radiant heat may therefore include emergency flaring initiated in response to the attacks. At the same time, the western group contains thermal activity at unusual locations without a comparable persistent signal in the preceding two-month record.

FIRMS directly detected six of the eight VNF clusters. No co-located FIRMS anomaly was present at C03 or C07. C03 was a newly appearing western source, whereas C07 had earlier VNF activity and may represent pre-existing combustion rather than a new impact location. This demonstrates why the two satellite products are complementary: FIRMS detected most of the event and provided independent confirmation. However, because FIRMS is less sensitive than VNF to nighttime flares and does not retrieve combustion temperature, it could not describe the event in the same operational detail.

Figure 2. Three-dimensional representation of VNF radiant heat along the pipeline, with independent cluster-ID pins C01–C08. Column height represents VNF radiant heat. FIRMS anomalies and MYC25Q4 flare-association information are shown as independent contextual layers. Known-emitter information was introduced only after the eight event clusters had been identified (animated version at https://eogdata.mines.edu/wwwdata/public/Saudi%20East-West%20pipeline%20fire_VNF_FIRMS_MYC25Q4.html ).

For each VNF overpass, the cluster radiant heat, designated RH75, was calculated by summing pixels whose RH was at least 75% of the maximum pixel RH within that cluster and overpass. This reduces the contribution of weaker peripheral pixels and provides a consistent measure for comparing the clusters. The clusters below are ordered geographically rather than by intensity.

Table 1. Locations and VNF-estimated radiative heat from the eight thermal events along the pipeline corridor. 

Figure 3. VNF detection history across the event and follow-up period. The upper panel shows the summed radiant heat for each physical VIIRS granule overpass, while the lower panel shows the corresponding mean fitted combustion temperature. Each thin vertical dotted line marks the time of an individual VIIRS granule overpass. The horizontal magenta dashed line marks 1500 K, a practical diagnostic threshold used to separate lower-temperature open-fire-compatible observations from the high-temperature combustion commonly associated with gas flames. The threshold is not a definitive oil-versus-gas classifier: retrieved temperatures can overlap because of subpixel mixing, smoke, atmospheric attenuation, viewing geometry, and fit uncertainty.

 REFERENCES

[1] Marhelm [@MarhelmData]. (2026, September 10). Diplomatic channels reporting the Saudi East-West pipeline has suffered catastrophic damage in multiple locations [Post]. X. https://x.com/MarhelmData/status/2098176806465540297

Marhelm [@MarhelmData]. (2026, September 10). What we’ve been told is that the pipeline has been damaged in at least 8 places [Post]. X. https://x.com/MarhelmData/status/2098186974037262602

[2] The Hormuz Letter [@HormuzLetter]. (2026, September 10). Yemen’s Houthis might have directly struck Saudi Arabia’s East-West crude oil pipeline… Sentinel-3… NASA FIRMS [Post]. X. https://x.com/HormuzLetter/status/2098152930348278000

The Hormuz Letter [@HormuzLetter]. (2026, September 11). BREAKING: Saudi Arabia’s East-West crude oil pipeline has suffered catastrophic damage in at least 8 locations… [Post]. X. https://x.com/HormuzLetter/status/2098219624252813501

[3] Saudi Gazette. “Saudi Arabia shuts East-West oil pipeline after multiple attacks.” September 11, 2026. https://saudigazette.com.sa/article/664495/saudi-arabia/saudi-arabia-shuts-east-west-oil-pipeline-after-multiple-attacks

[4]Reuters. “Saudi Arabia says drones launched from Iraq hit East-West pipeline, holds off on retaliation.” September 11, 2026. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/saudi-arabia-says-drones-launched-iraq-hit-east-west-pipeline-holds-off-2026-09-11/

[5] Elvidge, C. D., Zhizhin, M., Hsu, F.-C., and Baugh, K. E. “VIIRS Nightfire: Satellite Pyrometry at Night.” Remote Sensing 5, no. 9 (2013): 4423–4449. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs5094423.

[6] NASA. “Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS).” Accessed September 11, 2026. https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/.

[7] Zhizhin, M., Elvidge, C. D., Ghosh, T., Gleason, G., and Bazilian, M. “VIIRS Nightfire Super-Resolution Method for Multiyear Cataloging of Natural Gas Flaring Sites: 2012–2025.” Remote Sensing 18, no. 2 (2026): 314. https://doi.org/10.3390/rs18020314.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Mikhail Zhizhin
Research Associate, Earth Observation Group, Payne Institute for Public Policy, Colorado School of Mines

Mikhail Zhizhin, M.Science in mathematics from the Moscow State University in 1984, Ph.D. in computational seismology and pattern recognition from the Russian Acad. Sci. in 1992. Research positions from 1987 to 2012 in geophysics, space research and nuclear physics at Russian Acad. Sci., later at NOAA and CU Boulder. Currently he is a researcher at the Earth Observation Group at Colorado School of Mines. His applied research fields evolved from high performance computing in seismology, geodynamics, terrestrial and space weather to deep learning in remote sensing. He is developing new machine learning algorithms to better understand the Nature with Big Data.

Morgan Bazilian
Director, Payne Institute and Professor of Public Policy, Colorado School of Mines

Morgan Bazilian is the Director of the Payne Institute and a Professor of public policy at the Colorado School of Mines. Previously, he wD.as lead energy specialist at the World Bank. He has over two decades of experience in the energy sector and is regarded as a leading expert in international affairs, policy and investment. He is a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

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