Aramco Profit Surges 33% on War Prices While Yanbu Exports Draw Houthi Fire
Aramco posted a 33% jump in quarterly profit on war-driven oil prices even as liquids output fell 28% and Houthi attacks extended to the Red Sea export route.
ICE Brent crude front-month was trading at $101.06 a barrel as of early Thursday (2026-09-10), sustained by the same Middle East disruption that has inflated Saudi Aramco's earnings and simultaneously compressed the routes through which the kingdom can ship oil.
Aramco's second-quarter net profit rose 33% to $33.4 billion, the company reported on August 4 (2026-08-04), as higher prices more than offset a sharp production decline. Liquids output fell 28% year-on-year to 7.57 million barrels a day. Chief Executive Amin Nasser said attacks on Aramco assets in July had no material impact on operations and that full production capacity of 12 million barrels a day remained available. The gap between 7.57 million b/d of actual output and 12 million b/d of theoretical capacity is where the exposure concentrates.5,4
Aramco is now exploring options to expand its oil export capacity, Rigzone reported on August 4 (2026-08-04), as the Iran war continues to disrupt flows through the Strait of Hormuz and Houthi attacks extend into the Red Sea. All 4 million barrels a day of Saudi crude exports currently move through the Red Sea, according to reporting from late July (2026-07-21), concentrating the kingdom's entire export volume in a single maritime corridor under active threat.5,2
That corridor came under attack on August 5 (2026-08-05), when Houthi militants claimed to have struck a Saudi oil tanker near Yanbu, the kingdom's main Red Sea terminal. Oil prices rebounded following the claim. Houthi groups had already warned shipping companies against calling at any Saudi port, threatening vessels regardless of their location.6,2
Aramco had anticipated the escalation, shipping record volumes of crude from Yanbu in the weeks before the attack, oilprice.com reported in late July (2026-07-21). The move looked less like a strategic buffer than a scramble to clear barrels ahead of a worsening threat environment.2
Hormuz tells a parallel story. Flows through the strait fell to something like 15% of pre-war levels, against a normal run rate of roughly 20 million barrels a day of crude, condensate and products, PVM analyst John Evans said in late July (2026-07-27). An unofficial US-Iran ceasefire briefly pushed oil prices lower that week, but analysts quickly qualified what it meant for physical supply. "A political pause doesn't put a single extra barrel on the water right here and now," said Ole Hvalbye, market analyst at SEB Research. Industry analysts said they expect oil markets to remain highly volatile in the absence of a signed framework.3
For Aramco, the quarterly numbers look unambiguously positive. Higher oil prices produced a profit increase of a third on barrels that, before the war, cost less to ship. But those same numbers reflect a production system running well below capacity on export routes that are either blocked at Hormuz or under Houthi pressure in the Red Sea. Converting 12 million b/d of nameplate capacity into sustained revenue requires one of those two constraints to ease.5,4
On the asset sale front, Aramco was considering offloading a stake in its sulfur business for up to $7 billion, Reuters reported in June (2026-06-18), citing unnamed sources. One source told Reuters the value of Aramco's broader infrastructure portfolio could reach $50 billion. Earlier reports pointed to up to $10 billion from real estate disposals, including the Dhahran Camp residential complex in the Eastern Province. Those transactions would generate capital without requiring higher throughput — useful if export route constraints persist.1
The next concrete marker for traders is Yanbu tanker traffic in the weeks following the August 5 (2026-08-05) attack and whether shipping companies move to avoid Saudi ports entirely. A durable reduction in vessels calling at Yanbu, with Hormuz still effectively closed, would test whether Aramco's 12 million b/d capacity figure has any near-term market relevance at all.6,5,3