Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthis have stepped up their deadly campaign of strikes on Saudi Arabia's capital Riyadh, where booms were heard on Thursday, flights disrupted, and some office staff told to work from home.

The Houthis said they had fired a ballistic missile at Riyadh airport and repeated a threat to force Saudi airspace to close after the kingdom gave support to the forces of Yemen's internationally recognised government in a reignited civil war.

The conflict, now an overspill of the US-Iran war, has added new chaos to a region already aflame, and threatens to draw other states into gruelling mountain fighting - with Syria now considering deploying troops to assist Saudi Arabia.

The kingdom has pushed for support from allied nations, including Turkey and Pakistan, even if only in a logistical or defensive capacity, as it tries to reverse Houthi gains in southwest Yemen, by the southern entrance to the Red Sea.

Those requests have taken on more urgency since Saudi authorities said on Wednesday that three people had been killed this week in strikes on Riyadh airport and Abha airport in the southwest.

Those requests have taken on more urgency since Saudi authorities said on Wednesday that three people had been killed this week in strikes on Riyadh airport and Abha airport in the southwest.

Civil war reignited by conflict in Iran 

The flight tracker FlightRadar24 indicated numerous delayed arrivals and departures at Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport on Thursday.

Several mulitinational firms based in Riyadh's King Abdullah Financial District (KAFD) told staff to work from home after Thursday morning's loud booms, five people familiar with the matter said, including some affected staff.

The Saudi government did not respond to a request for comment, and KAFD was not immediately available for comment.

Some diplomats said they had received warnings, and some schools in Riyadh told parents there were orders to shelter in place, though authorities did not issue a public alert. Reuters could not identify the source of the booms. 

Yemen's long-running civil war, which paused with a ceasefire in 2022, has erupted again in recent weeks with the Houthis seizing stretches of the Red Sea coast last month, including along the vital Bab el-Mandeb Strait. 

The Houthis, who control many of Yemen's most populous areas, including the capital Sanaa, have said they were responding to attacks from the Saudi-backed government, which the government denies.

Their threats to shipping along a waterway that has become ever more critical for Gulf oil exports since Iran's attacks in the Strait of Hormuz, and their attacks on Saudi cities and infrastructure, have drawn the kingdom back in.

This week, Saudi-backed forces launched a counter attack, taking back areas around the strait.

However, in a war with several frontlines, the Houthis have made gains of their own, surrounding Yemen's third-largest city, Taiz, by taking territory along its main mountain road to Aden.

The fighting, which pits the Houthis against a coalition of Saudi-backed forces under the internationally recognised government, has led to a humanitarian crisis in the poorest Arab state, displacing 200,000 people since the conflict resumed.

Officials say Syrian aid might be purely defensive

One US and one Syrian defence official said Syria was carefully considering options for military support, including defensive aid to protect Saudi Arabia from attacks, or an offensive deployment to help take the fight to the Houthis.

In response to a request for comment to the Syrian foreign ministry, a diplomat said Syria stood firmly with Saudi Arabia but that its focus was on domestic priorities such as recovery from its own civil war.

Saudi Arabia this summer agreed the Mecca Pact with Turkey and Pakistan, committing all three to come to each other's defence, though Ankara has yet to ratify the treaty.

NATO-member Turkey said on Wednesday it was sending mainly defensive an technical support to the kingdom to help in the fight against the Houthis. 

A Turkish official said this was expected to take the form of military equipment, intelligence sharing and weapons systems.

Turkey, a close ally of Syria's government and a supporter of its forces while they were still rebels fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad, previously brought some Syrians fight in Libya's civil war in 2020.

Pakistan has flown military equipment to Aden in southern Yemen to help in the battle against the Houthis, sources in Pakistan have said, and has deployed troops within Saudi Arabia to help defend its borders.

The Saudi and Yemeni authorities did not respond to requests for comment.

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2026/10/08/booms-flight-disruptions-riyadh-saudi-houthi-war-escalates.html

Roughly one quarter of oil production in the US Gulf of Mexico has been taken offline as operators evacuate staff and scale back operations ahead of Hurricane Isaias, according to the Marine Minerals Administration, the US offshore regulator.

The Marine Minerals Administration reported that 511,619 barrels per day of oil output, equivalent to 25.08% of Gulf production, had been shut in as the storm drew closer.

Gas output was also disrupted, with 350.25m cu ft per day, or about 10m cu m per day, representing 16.37% of Gulf production, taken offline.

Eight production platforms and two rigs that are not dynamically positioned were evacuated, while one dynamically positioned rig was moved out of the storm's path.

Shell and Chevron were among the operators taking precautionary steps. Shell shut in production and pulled personnel from its Mars, Olympus, Ursa, Vito and Appomattox facilities. The company had earlier started removing non-essential staff from other Gulf assets, including Stones.

Chevron began shut-in procedures at four of its operated facilities and moved additional personnel onshore. BP also started removing non-essential workers from Gulf facilities as operators reacted to the worsening weather outlook.

The actions followed forecasts indicating that Isaias would strengthen as it advanced toward the northern Gulf Coast.

Operators are expected to inspect offshore facilities before restarting production once the storm has passed and weather conditions permit crews to return.

https://www.indexbox.io/blog/hurricane-isaias-shuts-down-25-of-us-gulf-oil-output/

Top U.S. and Russian officials, including U.S. Special Envoy Jared Kushner, have held talks about bringing a U.S. investor into the Nord Stream gas pipelines that supplied Germany before Russia invaded Ukraine, Reuters reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

The discussions included Kirill Dmitriev, a close adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Kushner, who has been trying to broker a truce between Russia and Ukraine. Kushner views business as central to restoring peace, and such a deal would enable U.S. investors to profit from energy flows to Europe once the war ends.

Dmitriev and Kushner have met in Moscow and New York in recent weeks, while two people familiar with the matter said the Nord Stream issue remains on the agenda, although it was unclear how much they discussed the pipelines at those meetings, according to the report.

The company controlling Nord Stream is 51% owned by Russian state energy giant Gazprom, while 31% is split between two German entities, and the remainder is held by a French and a Dutch firm. The two German shareholders are seeking to retain their stakes to maintain German influence if Gazprom sells its share, another person said.

The proposal faces significant hurdles as Nord Stream is under U.S. and EU sanctions, making a restart illegal under current sanctions, while a deal is unlikely in the medium term because of the obstacles, the report added.

A White House official said any potential deals would need to be negotiated with the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation and Treasury and benefit U.S. taxpayers and companies.

Broadly, a gas deal would please the Kremlin but would divide German public opinion, which is already split over buying Russian energy. Poland and the Baltic states, which are particularly vulnerable to Russia, reject energy ties.

https://www.tradingview.com/news/seekingalpha:3ba5259e8094b:0-u-s-and-russia-discuss-reopening-path-for-russian-gas-sales-to-germany-report/

By Natalia Katona - Oct 07, 2026, 6:00 PM CDT

• Washington’s tariff pressure is pushing South Korea toward Alaska LNG, but Seoul’s conditional interest falls short of financing a project costing up to $54 billion.
• Alaska’s costly pipeline and difficult terrain threaten to outweigh its shipping advantage, with capital costs approaching $2.7 billion per million tonnes of annual LNG capacity.
• Weakening Korean gas demand and competing Canadian supplies undermine Alaska’s investment case, giving Seoul reasons to seek a less costly way to satisfy Washington.

Washington’s tariff pressure is giving Alaska LNG something its economics have struggled to secure: a potential investor. Discussed for decades, the costly and technically complex project has regained momentum under President Donald Trump, who is using tariff threats to press foreign partners into backing it. South Korea is now at the centre of that effort, as Seoul’s bid to protect access to the US market becomes a negotiation over financing one of America’s most expensive energy developments.

The question is whether that pressure can produce a commercially viable investment. Washington’s threat of 25% tariffs on Korean exports led to an arrangement, lowering the rate to 15% in exchange for $350 billion in investments and $100 billion in US energy purchases. South Korea’s parliament passed corresponding legislation in March 2026, with negotiations moving toward specific energy projects in September.

On October 1, Seoul outlined potential investments including a 6.47 GW gas-fired power project in Texas serving AI data centres from 2029, and eight US nuclear reactors costing a combined $120 billion, including two using Korea’s APR-1400 design. Alaska LNG was also under review, conditional on commercial and legal requirements being met and that condition is what matters. In September, President Trump had already announced that South Korea was to pay more than $50 billion toward Alaska LNG at an event attended by Alaska officials and Glenfarne Chief Executive Brendan Duval. Seoul’s conditional review falls well short of that commitment.

Owned 75% by Glenfarne and 25% by the state of Alaska, the proposed $45 billion–$54 billion development would transport North Slope gas to domestic consumers and ultimately an export terminal at Nikiski in south-central Alaska. However, the project has a fundamental disadvantage which is in its immense cost of connecting remote reserves to customers: treatment facilities and a roughly 1,300-kilometre (807-mile), pipeline must precede export revenues.

Geography of the project is the main issue. Much of the pipeline would be buried across difficult terrain, including shifting permafrost and mountain crossings reaching 1.5 km (5,000 feet). About 54% can be constructed only during summer, making missed construction windows a significant delay risk. Unresolved state-tax arrangements and domestic cost allocations add uncertainty over who absorbs possible overruns, including whether Alaskan households could face higher gas and electricity bills. Alaska must build exceptionally expensive infrastructure simply to reach the starting point of competing exporters.

Capital intensity approaches $2.7 billion per million tonnes of annual LNG capacity (in comparison to an $898 million/tonne for Qatar’s North Field East and $762 million/tonne for Cheniere’s Corpus Christi Stage 3). Development would proceed in phases, beginning with the pipeline that would feed the local market before the larger export component (first exports are targeted for 2031). This means that financing and cost recovery during the domestic-supply phase is yet another complication for the matter.

Asian commitments have so far been considerably narrower than Trump’s announcements. In July 2025, he said Japan would form an Alaska LNG joint venture under its $550 billion US investment vehicle. Alaska LNG subsequently disappeared from Japan’s list of potential investments. Japanese participation instead centred on an autumn 2025 letter of intent involving Jera and Tokyo Gas to purchase 1 million tonnes of LNG annually for 20 years.

Korea’s Posco International has similarly signed a non-binding agreement to buy 1 million tonnes annually for 20 years and supply a significant share of pipeline steel. Taiwan, Thailand and TotalEnergies have also expressed potential buying interest. Such arrangements indicate demand, but do not settle construction financing or risk allocation.

South Korea nevertheless still has substantial reasons to maintain access to American LNG. Its annual demand of 47.8 million tonnes dwarfs Posco’s proposed Alaska purchases. In 2025, the US supplied 4.4 million tonnes, behind Australia’s 14.7 million, Malaysia’s 7.9 million and Qatar’s 7.2 million. That balance shifted after the US-Iran conflict began in late February and Qatar effectively stopped exporting LNG. Korean imports from the US rose from 200,000 tonnes in March (out of total 3.1 million tonnes), to 1 million tonnes in July (out of 3.7 million tonnes). America became a leading supplier alongside Australia.

Yet greater reliance on US supply coincides with weakening Korean LNG demand. Net-zero policies are gradually reducing consumption, while wartime price increases prompted temporarily higher coal-fired generation and subsequent lower gas burning. Over the summer months, South Korea’s gas-fired power generation fell 9% year-over-year to an average 13 GWh. For reference, Korean coal usage is so far up 18% in 2026 to date, averaging almost 15 GWh throughout January-July. Milder summer temperatures also softened electricity demand during the usual summer and early-autumn peak.

When it comes to competing with European buyers of US LNG, Alaska offers a tangible advantage. US Gulf Coast shipments to South Korea around the Cape of Good Hope take approximately 40–45 days, with current freight estimated at around $42,000/day. Panama offers a shorter route, but transit restrictions, queues and canal charges make it less attractive even in comparison to the Cape of Good Hope route. In contrast, possible Nikiski-to-Korea voyages would take roughly 10–12 days, avoiding canals and major chokepoints.

However, South Korea can already access Pacific LNG without financing Alaska’s pipeline. LNG Canada, the venture backed by Shell, Petronas, PetroChina, Mitsubishi and Korea’s own KOGAS, began exports in July 2025 and already shipped 1 million tonnes to Asian markets this September. Its upcoming expansion to 28 million tonnes annually (approved late last month) would increase competition for the buyers Alaska needs. Shorter voyages are valuable, but Alaska has no monopoly on them.

Seoul’s caution therefore predates the current negotiations. Last year, South Korea’s trade and industry minister described Alaska LNG as high risk and an unviable investment option. However, tariff pressure has made repeating that judgment diplomatically harder, without resolving the underlying economics.

For now, Seoul will most likely try to gain time before making a diplomatically risky announcement of not participating in the project. Trump’s signalling of Korean investment into an unspecified $8.4 billion enhanced oil recovery project could offer this alternative. Such projects use injections of steam, gases or chemicals to extract additional crude. Too few details are available to assess this proposal, but it could give Seoul another way to demonstrate investment cooperation while limiting exposure to the commercially questionable Alaska LNG project.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Natural-Gas/Who-Is-Going-to-Pay-for-Alaska-LNG.html