Riyadh Built the Congress — the War Built the Agenda

Correction, October 12, 2026: An earlier version of this article said a Houthi missile destroyed a Saudia Airbus A320 at the gate of King Khalid International Airport on October 8 and that the attack was the first to destroy a commercial aircraft there. Saudi authorities said a parked Saudia aircraft, type not given, was damaged; the airport had also been attacked on October 6–7. The article also said the Strait of Hormuz had been continuously closed since February 28 and was running below five percent of normal traffic, gave East-West pipeline and Yanbu throughput figures we cannot source, attributed to Aramco’s chief executive a quotation we cannot find, misstated Aramco’s November price cut, said ten airlines had suspended service, and included unsourced claims about an Italian minister attending by video, delegates rerouted through Dammam, an IRGC attack on a tanker named NV Sunshine, Iranian conditions for reopening Hormuz, and quotations attributed to CSIS, Chatham House and Semafor. A sentence added after publication also misdated President Trump’s October 10 remarks. These have been corrected or removed.

RIYADH — The 25th World Petroleum Congress opens in Riyadh on October 11 under conditions that contradict every premise of its hosting. Houthi attacks on King Khalid International Airport on October 8 killed three people and damaged a parked Saudia aircraft, and several airlines have suspended service to the Saudi capital.

Saudi Arabia won the WPC bid years ago as a flagship demonstration that the Kingdom could host — and lead — the global energy order from its own capital. Three Saudi nationals died in the October 8 attacks, and hundreds of flights were cancelled that day, according to CNBC.

Organisers projected more than 25,000 delegates, around 100 energy ministers and 500 CEOs; a later update put expected attendance at more than 70 ministers and some 300 CEOs and senior executives, according to TradeArabia. The gap between that projection and the actual registration count will measure something the programme cannot: whether the world still treats Riyadh as a place to do business or a place to avoid.

What Was the World Petroleum Congress Meant to Prove?

The WPC was designed to prove that Riyadh could function as the permanent capital of the global energy industry — not merely as its largest supplier, but as the city where oil ministers, CEOs, and heads of state convened to set the industry’s direction. The 25th Congress is the first in the event’s ninety-year history to be held in Saudi Arabia.

Vision 2030 was built on a core proposition: that Saudi economic credibility could be decoupled from Saudi security vulnerability. The Kingdom would diversify its revenue base, attract foreign investment, host global events, and project the image of a modern, stable commercial hub — even as the region around it remained volatile. WPC 2026, opening at the Riyadh Front Exhibition and Conference Centre with 800 speakers across more than thirty sessions on artificial intelligence, critical minerals, carbon management and the changing energy mix, was the most ambitious test of that proposition to date.

The speaker roster reads like a board meeting of the global oil industry. BP CEO Meg O’Neill, ExxonMobil Chairman Darren Woods, Shell CEO Wael Sawan, TotalEnergies CEO Patrick Pouyanne, and Baker Hughes CEO Lorenzo Simonelli are all listed alongside Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman, according to WPC Energy and Trade Arabia. Saudi Arabia’s broader diversification effort depended on events like this one to demonstrate that the Kingdom was open, investable, and safe.

WPC was the event where the war was supposed to stay outside — a conference hall in which Saudi Arabia could talk about AI, critical minerals and carbon management while its eastern sea lane was disrupted and its western export route carried the load.

The war did not stay outside.

The Missile That Rewrote the Conference

On October 8 — three days before the Congress opening — Houthi forces struck King Khalid International Airport in two waves. The first hit airport facilities. The second struck a parked Saudia aircraft. Three Saudi nationals were killed, among them Saudia captain Hamoud Ali Alkalthami, according to CNBC.

The attack was not an isolated strike. The Houthis said they also fired missiles at Najran airport, and the coalition said it intercepted a missile aimed at Khamis Mushait, according to AP. The Houthis said they had attacked the airport with two cruise missiles — a statement of capability aimed directly at the airlines whose routes feed Riyadh’s conference economy.

The airport had been struck before: attacks on October 6 and 7 killed a Sudanese resident at King Khalid. The October 8 attacks appeared to be the first confirmed attack on the national carrier since the new offensive began, according to AP, and killed a Saudia pilot.

The strike hit the primary international arrival point three days before one of the Kingdom’s largest planned gatherings of the year.

Major General Turki al-Malki, the Saudi coalition spokesperson, said “Houthi attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure will be met with a firm response,” per CNBC. The response may come. The flights did not.

How Many Delegates Can Reach Riyadh?

Several international airlines suspended Riyadh service after the October 8 strike, among them Lufthansa Group, Air India, Pakistan International Airlines, FlyDubai, Etihad Airways, Emirates and Air Arabia, according to AP and CBS News.

Sources: Fortune/AP (October 9, 2026).

Lufthansa Group’s suspension runs through October 16, the day after WPC closes.

Several Western governments have issued travel advisories against Saudi Arabia. The US government now requires special authorisation for its employees to use Riyadh’s airport, according to CBS News. The advisory apparatus surrounding the airport effectively creates a two-tier attendance structure: Gulf-based delegates who can drive in, and international delegates who must fly through airspace that was attacked days earlier. On October 11 — opening day of the WPC — the Houthis formally declared all Saudi airports except Mecca and Medina legitimate targets, converting the preceding days’ attacks into an explicit siege policy against Saudi civilian aviation.

The Pipeline That Holds the Conference Together

The East-West Petroline — built decades ago as a strategic bypass for the Strait of Hormuz — is now the main route for Saudi crude avoiding Hormuz. Saudi Arabia restarted it on September 22 after drone attacks shut it, and Reuters reported that a return to its design capacity of about 7 million bpd could take six weeks or more.

Even with Yanbu absorbing the export load the Houthis have already targeted, Saudi Arabia has not replaced the full volume that once moved through the Strait.

The conference programme includes sessions on global energy security. The delegates sitting in those sessions will be aware of a piece of infrastructure to their west that drone strikes shut last month and that is still returning to full capacity. The East-West Pipeline was Saudi Arabia’s insurance policy against a Hormuz closure. It was not designed to function as the primary export artery for the world’s largest oil exporter. Seven months into the war, that is what it has become.

Can Hormuz Reopen Before the Congress Closes?

Not on any agreed terms. No US–Iran deal exists, and Trump has ruled out attacking Iran before the November 3 midterms while keeping the US blockade of Iranian ports in place.

The diplomatic record has not moved. Iran’s seven-day roadmap, conveyed through Qatar in September, was rejected by Trump, according to the Wall Street Journal. Neither party is describing movement.

The war began on February 28, 2026, and Iran declared the strait closed again on July 12 after a brief reopening under the June Islamabad memorandum. About a fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas passed through the strait before the war. The war’s timeline has already outlasted the June memorandum. For the duration of WPC, no reopening has been agreed.

On October 13, the coalition struck the Yemen Petroleum Company fuel depot at Al-Sabaha, Sanaa — extending oil-infrastructure targeting to the Yemeni side of the conflict. Coalition Strikes Sanaa Oil Site After Evacuation Warning.

Even if a back-channel breakthrough emerged on opening day — a scenario no source currently supports — physical resumption of normal tanker traffic through a strait patrolled and blockaded during the war would require insurance reassessment and port-state inspections. Reopening is measured in weeks, not sessions.

What Does Aramco’s Discount Signal to the Delegates?

Aramco set its November Arab Light official selling price for Asian buyers at $5 a barrel below the Oman/Dubai average, the widest discount since June 2020, and cut Arab Medium and Arab Heavy by $5, according to Reuters. The discount tells Asian refiners what the Congress podium will not: Saudi crude is harder to deliver and Riyadh is paying to keep buyers committed.

Instead of commanding a premium for crude routed around Hormuz, Aramco is offering its lowest price in six years. Three Asian refining sources told Reuters the cuts appeared aimed at compensating buyers for elevated freight costs, with a very large crude carrier from the Gulf to China costing $1.2 million a day against about $80,000 a year earlier.

Saudi Arabia is discounting now to maintain the buyer relationships that Vision 2030 counts on for long-term revenue stability — relationships that will be physically present, or conspicuously absent, at WPC.

The discount also carries a temporal signal. Aramco sets its OSPs monthly, and the November pricing was released in early October — before the airport strike. The price already reflected a market struggling with constrained sea lanes and uncertain delivery schedules. The events of October 8 have added a new layer of risk that the December OSP will price but the November figure does not yet capture.

Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman will address the Congress as the head of an energy ministry that has just set the lowest price for its flagship product in six years. The OSP was published before he takes the podium. The audience will have read the number before they hear the speech. In a room full of traders, the discount is the keynote.

The Conference Riyadh Cannot Cancel

Cancellation would be worse than a thin attendance list. Postponing or relocating WPC would confirm what the Houthi missile and the Hormuz closure have implied: that Riyadh is not safe enough to host the industry it supplies. Every element of the Vision 2030 proposition — foreign direct investment, tourism, entertainment, sport, conference diplomacy — depends on the premise that the Kingdom is open for business. Cancelling the first WPC ever held in Saudi Arabia would retire that premise in front of the global energy press.

The alternative — holding the Congress with reduced attendance — carries a more legible cost. If the supermajor CEOs listed as attending appear, the event functions as planned. If one or more withdraw or shift to video, the gaps become the narrative. Every empty chair in the plenary hall competes with every talking point on the programme. The diplomatic contradictions Riyadh is already managing with Washington would sharpen further under a visible attendance deficit at the Kingdom’s own flagship event.

The real measurement will come from the rooms that are not on camera. WPC’s value to Saudi Arabia was never the plenary sessions — it was the bilateral meetings, the offtake negotiations, the corridor handshakes between Saudi diplomats and their counterparts that signal alignment on supply contracts, joint ventures, and technology partnerships. Those meetings require physical presence. Video links do not produce signed deals.

A ninety-year-old institution chose Riyadh to make a statement about where the energy world is headed. The war has turned that statement into a question — one the Houthis posed with cruise missiles and a disrupted Strait of Hormuz has not answered. The reply arrives on October 11. It will not come from the keynote address. It will come from the registration desk.

The EU-GCC Summit was scheduled to follow on October 24 in the same city. It did not. Seven events cancelled in the same month — the summit, Riyadh Season, and five others — measured the distance between the calendar October was designed to project and the October the war produced.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does the 25th World Petroleum Congress run?

The congress is being held in Saudi Arabia for the first time in its 90-year history, according to TradeArabia. Organisers scheduled a ministerial gala dinner on October 11, the official inauguration on October 12 and a closing and handover ceremony on October 15.

What share of seaborne oil trade depends on the Strait of Hormuz?

About a fifth of the world’s traded oil and gas passed through the Strait of Hormuz before the war, according to Al Jazeera. The disruption has therefore hit gas supply chains as well as crude markets.

What happens to Saudi Arabia’s FII conference if WPC attendance is low?

The Future Investment Initiative — often called “Davos in the Desert” — is scheduled for later in October 2026 in Riyadh. FII attendance patterns have served as a barometer of investor confidence in the Kingdom. A weak WPC turnout would compound pressure on FII organisers, particularly since finance-sector participants track energy-sector attendance as a leading indicator of Saudi risk appetite among global corporates.