With the Strait of Hormuz too dangerous for marine traffic, a couple of alternative routes are being used for crude oil exports. The Saudis have Yanbu, a port on the Red Sea coast and UAE has Fujairah, on the East side of the Strait of Hormuz.
I checked online on Yanbu. Turns out it is actually a decent size export facility (can handle about 4.5M bbls daily). Assume Yanbu ramps up to 4M bbls daily, that’s about 2 VLCCs/day.
Amin Nasser, the chief executive of Aramco, said: “While we have faced disruptions in the past, this one by far is the biggest crisis the region’s oil and gas industry has faced.”
Aramco has been unable to ship crude cargoes out of the Gulf owing to the disruption, but it hopes to meet customer demands by flowing crude through the east-west pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, from where it could be shipped to buyers.
The company plans to increase shipments through the pipeline to reach its full capacity of 7m barrels a day in the next couple of days, it said. About 2m barrels a day will be sent to Saudi Arabia’s refineries in the west of the country, leaving 5m barrels a day for the global crude market. This represents about 70% of the kingdom’s usual exports.
Typically, about 100 tankers a day pass through the narrow waterway lying south of Iran, but the number has dwindled to single digits after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps threatened to “set ablaze” any vessel using the trade route, which carries a fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas.
Aramco said that it was now meeting most of its customers’ needs, partly by tapping crude held in storage outside the Gulf region. Nasser said these stores could not be used for “an extended period of time, but for the time being, we are capitalising on it”.
He said: “There would be catastrophic consequences for the world’s oil markets, and the longer the disruption goes on … the more drastic the consequences for the global economy.”
G7 leaders on Tuesday called on the world’s energy watchdog to prepare scenarios for the release of emergency oil stockpiles to help cool the markets after historic market price gains recorded in recent days. However, the bloc stopped short of giving the green light to a stock release, which has happened on only five occasions in the history of the market.
It has certainly trickled down - the report below indicated only four vessels on March 8, 2026. There was an Iranian VLCC that exited the Strait heading for China. It also suggests there are around 75 vessels in the Gulf of Oman waiting to enter when it is safe
The globe has about 6 or 7 days till the last of the cargoes to go through the Straits has reached its destination. Then, effectively, there are zero shipments from now on from the Strait.
Prior to the war 20 to 21 million bbl per day were going through the Strait.
NG is possibly a worse situation.
Keep in mind an operating oil refinery is a license to print money. Rather than shut it down for lack of oil better to bid for whatever oil is available. Especially when you can pass increased cost on to consumers.
We hope the issue gets resolved soon. Otherwise prices can skyrocket as no one wants to be w/o oil.