What a coincidence: Oil empire capitals Riyadh and Moscow both under attack at the same time

 Ukraine launches heavy Moscow drone attack as Russia votes

Flames, smoke seen near Riyadh airport; Houthis claim attacks on Saudi capital 

 

April 2024

 

Yanbu out

 

Saudis ramp up oil exports using Sumed pipeline to the Mediterranean, Sidi Kerir Egypt now exporting 2.3 mbpd in August, more than double the July level

Most of this oil is now going to Europe and the U.S. instead of Asia because of the extra time and shipping cost for going around Africa.

The UAE is now in the catbird seat for shipping oil to Asia, at least until Iran decides to attack Fujairah.

 

Saudi Arabia ramps up oil exports through Mediterranean pipeline to avoid attacks in Red Sea  

 ... Oil exports from Egypt’s Mediterranean port of Sidi Kerir have more than doubled to about 2.3 million barrels per day in August compared to around 1 million bpd last month, according to data provided by the trade intelligence firm Kpler. The majority of those exports are Saudi crude, said Matt Smith, director of commodity research at Kpler. ...

Saudi exports from Yanbu through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait were down nearly 90% to 1.3 million barrels during the week of Aug. 3, compared with 11 million barrels for the week of July 20 when the Houthis declared the embargo, according to Kpler data. ...

 

 

Middle East outbound oil flows through both Straits are back down in the range of 6 million barrels per day if Bab-el-Mandeb is now indeed a return to the pre-war level

 It appears that there is nothing extra coming out of the Red Sea anymore, diverted by Saudi Arabia west to Yanbu.

UAE moved 0.95 mbpd through Hormuz in July 2026, but 2.28 mbpd out of Fujairah which doesn't go through Hormuz, which would be in addition to the now ~6 million through Hormuz, yielding 8.28 mbpd approximately, as we speak.

That's 62% off the pre-war level of ~22 mbpd out of the Middle East.

Trump not vanquishing the Houthis in 2025 is America's chickens comin' home to roost.

 

Middle East tanker transits July 16-22, 2026: Strait of Hormuz 2.0/day, Bab-el-Mandeb Strait 14.6/day

BAM transits fell in JMIC Update 075 to 10.0/day since the Houthi Rebels announced on July 20 a blockade of Saudi shipping through the chokepoint. SE traffic fell to 4.0/day.

A product tanker is at anchor in the Red Sea off the coast of Saudi Arabia after it was attacked by the Houthis on July 22.

Professional observers report some tankers abandoning their runs SE and turning back NW while Chinese VLCCs apparently are being green-lighted through despite loading with Saudi oil at Yanbu. 

VLCCs fully laden cannot transit the Suez Canal due to size constraints and must partially off-load before transiting and then re-load on the Mediterranean side of the canal.

 

Mad King Ludwig: To stop Iran from getting The Bomb we have to let Saudi Arabia get The Bomb

 Saudis Reach Deal With U.S. That Could Let Them Enrich Nuclear Fuel

... Prince Mohammed has vowed he would build nuclear weapons if Iran does so, even insisting in one interview he would do so “without a doubt.”

... Mr. Trump’s concessions to the Saudis on the terms of the nuclear deal are significant. When the United States entered into a similar agreement with the United Arab Emirates, which went into force in 2009, there were far more restrictive conditions. The U.A.E. agreed to the stringent inspections, signing what is called an “additional protocol” with the International Atomic Energy Agency. And it agreed to forgo the right to produce its own fuel, cutting off the possibility that it would have the infrastructure to produce a weapon.

That agreement became known as the “gold standard” for nuclear nonproliferation. And while the administration plans to argue that it will have other restrictions in place — including joint partnerships with the Saudis that will allow Washington to keep a close eye on the kingdom’s program — the fact remains that Mr. Trump has retreated from the restrictions negotiated by the Bush and Obama administrations.

While the bulk of the negotiations with the U.A.E. took place while President George W. Bush was in office, it was finished by President Barack Obama and went into effect in 2009. ...

Looks like Trump's 2025 loss in the Red Sea is coming back to bite

 Iran’s Houthi allies declare maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia, escalating threat to oil market

Reuters and CNBC reported the restart to Saudi oil export operations in the Persian Gulf on Saturday

 Saudi Aramco resumes oil loading at Ras Tanura in boost to supply

... Two Very Large Crude Carriers controlled by Saudi’s shipping arm Bahri were seen loading crude at Ras Tanura, the world’s biggest oil port, while another is heading towards the terminal, the data showed on Friday. A fourth VLCC waited nearby. Each VLCC is capable of loading 2 million barrels of oil.

... Ras Tanura sits on Saudi Arabia’s eastern coast on the Gulf and is west of the Strait of Hormuz. It used to export more than 5 million bpd of crude before the conflict. The country’s largest domestic 550,000 bpd refinery is also located at Ras Tanura, which was shut during the war as a precautionary measure. 

Aramco last loaded a cargo from Ras Tanura port for China on March 8, LSEG data showed, and had to divert its exports to the Red Sea port of Yanbu after the Iranian blockade of the strait during its war with the U.S. and Israel prevented ships from entering the Gulf.

The war has caused Saudi crude exports to slump to about 4 million bpd in the past three months, the data showed, from more than 7 million bpd in February.

... [Rystad Energy] now estimates that shut-in production across the Gulf has fallen to 9.6 million barrels per day (bpd) in mid-June, down from 11.7 million bpd just three weeks ago, and expects a full supply recovery in the region by the end of the year. 

Saudis confirmed loading VLCCs in the Persian Gulf for the first time in four months

 

Meanwhile others claim the Saudis are moving oil through the Strait of Hormuz

 In a world where tankers routinely turn off their automatic marine identification systems to avoid identification and hide their locations, or use them to broadcast fake identities and locations, or even sail under false flags, it is difficult to know what to believe. 

The oceans are still The Wild West.

Two examples today claiming Saudi use of the Strait of Hormuz: 

 

The one big missing factor: Saudi Arabia reportedly has not used the Persian Gulf to ship anything

 Shipping rebounds in Strait of Hormuz one week after U.S.-Iran deal – but fragile confidence threatens recovery

 

... Aristidis Alafouzos, CEO of Okeanis Eco Tankers Corp, a crude oil shipping company headquartered in Greece, said he doesn’t expect Thursday’s attack on a ship in the Gulf of Oman to “significantly change” the trend of transits through the waterway.

“We’ve seen a large increase, especially on the crude oil passages, and I think this is set to continue and maybe this one-off event isn’t enough to really disrupt the recent events of the large exports of Kuwaiti and Emirati crude oil from the Gulf,” Alafouzos told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday.

“The one big missing factor is the Saudis. For now, we haven’t seen them export almost anything from inside the Arabian Gulf and everything is coming from Yanbu in the Red Sea.” ...

Typical straw man argument from Trump when Saudi Arabia has primarily defensive ballistic missiles, 30x fewer of them than Iran, and used none of them in the recent war when Iran launched 135 against them

 Trump On Iran Deal: "What Am I Going To Do? Let Saudi Arabia Have Missiles, But They Can't?"

When the going gets tough, the weak have to sell their gold, or hinder its purchase

 As gold’s tumble continues, traders bet the pain may last for two more years

... “Turkey’s central bank is selling gold and buying dollars trying to support the lira, and the gulf nations – Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia – they need the money for the war so they’ve been selling gold, too,” Nigam Arora, founder of the Arora Report, said in a call. “At the same time, India’s raised duties on gold, and anyone who’s just watching charts, they had stops under $4,400 and had to start selling when it broke that level.“ ...       

Meanwhile in India . . .

Reserve Bank of India’s forex defense tool surpasses $110 billion as rupee slides 

The RBI's net-short dollar book has ballooned to record levels as India's central bank fights to stabilize a currency under siege from oil prices, geopolitical tensions, and capital outflows. 

India’s central bank is burning through an unprecedented amount of financial ammunition to keep the rupee from cratering. The Reserve Bank of India’s forward dollar-selling contracts have crossed the $110 billion mark, reaching an estimated $110-115 billion in early June 2026, a record for the institution’s net-short dollar book.

Think of it like this: instead of selling dollars from its vault today and watching reserves drain in real time, the RBI is writing IOUs to sell dollars at a future date. It’s a way to defend the currency now while kicking the reserve hit down the road. The problem is that the IOUs are piling up fast, and the road isn’t getting any longer. ...

India imports roughly 85% of its crude oil needs, making it acutely sensitive to energy cost swings. When oil gets more expensive, India needs more dollars to pay for it, which weakens the rupee.

The forward sales strategy itself carries a subtle risk. Those contracts eventually mature, meaning the RBI will need to deliver dollars at the agreed-upon future dates. If the rupee hasn’t stabilized by then, the central bank could face a situation where it’s simultaneously defending the currency in real time and settling old commitments. ...

The increase in Saudi oil exports through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait in April 2026 came to about 3.3 million barrels per day according to Kpler

  Iran’s threats against this Red Sea choke point are a big vulnerability for the oil market

 ... Oil and product exports through the Bab el-Mandeb nearly doubled to 7.2 million barrels per day in April compared with 3.9 million bpd in February before the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, according to data provided by Kpler. 

The interactive chart by Kpler in the story is a shipwreck.

The data is in millions of barrels per day passing through, as explained in the story. Unfortunately you don't see "million" anywhere in the chart. 

What you see is 5.2B, 7.7B, 2.9B, etc., which could easily be misinterpreted as either "barrels" or "billion".

The proper designation should be MMb/d or perhaps MMB/D in the chart, but maybe just leave that out entirely next time because it's already too busy and just put "million" in the subtitle before "barrels" and leave it 5.2, 7.7, 2.9, etc. in the chart.

 

 

Meanwhile CNBC has an excellent story with great interactive graphs of vessel transits through the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait before and after the Houthi and Iran conflicts

 And it's quite clear that the Iran war has had no real effect on the number of vessel transits through the Bab-el-Mandeb while destroying transits through the Strait of Hormuz.

Increased Saudi reliance on Yanbu on the Red Sea might change BAM transits in the future, but to what extent transits through SoH might recover is very difficult to say.

BAM transits never recovered from the Houthi threat, and SoH transits may not from the Iran threat, with serious implications not just for oil but for important bulk materials like fertilizer and helium.

SoH transits:

Feb 24 2026: 107.29

Apr 18 2026:   12.57

May 24 2026:    6.00

 

BAM transits:

 

May 24 2023: 82.86

Feb 26 2026:  40.14

May 24 2026: 38.14 

 

Oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz might not return to levels seen before the Iran war

... Daily traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, collapsed by more than half from 75 ships on Nov. 19, 2023 to 31 vessels by January 30, 2024. More than two years later, traffic through the strait still has not returned to the levels once considered normal. ...

Tanker transits in both the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea crawled to a virtual halt on April 10-11

Just two out of the Strait of Hormuz April 10-11, just nine through the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait in either direction after Iran attacked the Saudi pipeline to Yanbu on April 8-9.

 

Today's drinking word is CINO

 Ceasefire in name only.

 

 

Tanker traffic out of the Persian Gulf has been cut by 98% in one month because of the Iran War, effectively reducing the world's primary energy inputs through the Strait of Hormuz by 20%

The UAE is bypassing the Strait of Hormuz with 1.9 million barrels per day now coming out of Fujairah via its overland pipeline, and Saudi Arabia's overland pipeline west to Yanbu is moving about 4.5 million barrels per day out through the Red Sea, but that's not the 20 million barrels per day lost due to the war, and no LNG is moving at all.

Pakistan and Bangladesh get two thirds of their LNG from the Gulf, Taiwan gets one third of its LNG. Taiwan says its has eleven days' supply remaining. Many others are also severely affected by the cut-off of LNG from Qatar. About 20 LNG tankers are trapped in the Gulf, half the global fleet available for charter.

Meanwhile Iran has increased export of its oil from 1 million barrels per day in February to 2 million in March, 90% of which goes to China, and Iran is now charging tolls to vessels to exit the Gulf along its coast, which occurs only under Iranian escort. 

 

 

The Houthis have joined Iran by restarting hostilities against Israel

Trump couldn't finish the Houthis off last year, and now they come back to bite.

Oil tankers filling at Saudi Arabia's Yanbu port in the Red Sea because it was too dangerous in the Persian Gulf may soon have nowhere to fill.

All because Donald Trump has been mistaken twice in the Middle East.

The energy crisis will soon be a global energy catastrophe, leading to an inflation catastrophe, leading to an economic catastrophe. And maybe a world war.

 

 

For all the crazies who think the Joos are behind the U.S. attack on Iran, make room in your conspiracy theories now for the Saudis, too, lol