Saudi Oil Exports Approach Pre-War Levels
Saudi Arabia’s crude oil exports have surged close to their pre-war levels as the kingdom starts getting its tankers through the Strait of Hormuz again, one of the most emphatic indications yet that Persian Gulf shipments are normalizing in the wake of an interim peace deal between the US and Iran.
The world’s top exporter shipped 6.3 million barrels a day in the six days through Wednesday, tanker-tracking by Bloomberg shows. That puts flows at about the same as their 2025 average and at almost 90% of February, a month in which the country and its gulf neighbors were ramping up supplies before the Iran war began.
On Thursday, four of the nation’s oil supertankers, with a combined transport capacity of 8 million barrels, popped up on ship-tracking systems in the Gulf of Oman, having previously been at Saudi Arabia’s main export installations inside the Persian Gulf.
Saudi Arabia’s energy ministry didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
While short-term averages of cargo flows are volatile, Saudi ships have been ramping up volumes from Ras Tanura over the past week. That’s boosted exports alongside flows via pipeline to the port of Yanbu on its west coast.
The 6.3 million barrels a day figure is a combined count of shipments from both Yanbu and Saudi Arabia’s Persian Gulf facilities. If sustained, the shipments would mark a significant jump on June levels, which were at about 4.5 million barrels a day, according to tanker tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.
Oil futures have slumped over the past few weeks, erasing all their gains from the war as increased shipments from the Middle East created a surplus of cargoes. Traders are fixated on the pace and scale of how fast the region’s exports can get back to normal, returning millions of barrels a day of supply to the market.
Saudi Arabia’s rebound resembles that of its neighbor, the United Arab Emirates, which last month restored its oil exports to pre-conflict levels of more than 3.9 million barrels a day. A US official estimated that oil supply through Hormuz has now reached more than 10 million barrels a day.
The four oil supertankers that cleared Hormuz, all owned by Saudi tanker giant Bahri, are part of a flotilla of vessels over 300 meters (1,000 feet) long that made their way into the Persian Gulf late last month.
Together, they’re carrying about 8 million barrels loaded at Ras Tanura, one of the world’s biggest crude-export facilities, the vessel-tracking data show.
Bahri hired two oil supertankers, the Daba and the Seeb, on Thursday, to collect roughly 4 million barrels from the Middle East Gulf, according to fixture data compiled by Bloomberg. The charters are a possible sign of Saudi Arabia further ramping up exports.
There are also several tankers that could potentially depart on Thursday, further boosting flows.
The interim peace deal agreed last month by Washington and Tehran included an agreement that ships could pass through Hormuz again. Still, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has nevertheless continued to claim control of the waterway, and two vessels have been attacked.
Bloomberg reported Wednesday that state-run Saudi Aramco has sold at least 6 million barrels of crude on an ad-hoc basis to Asian customers, a departure from its standard practice of long-term deals.
Traffic through Hormuz has picked up, with ships increasingly moving in convoys to clear the strait. Non-Iranian vessels are generally passing through a US-administered corridor in Omani waters.
Only a limited number of Saudi oil tankers remain inside the Persian Gulf. Of the four that remain near Ras Tanura, two are signaling that they are fully loaded, while another hasn’t updated its draft but appeared to load at the port in recent days.
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