Aramco Shifts to Ship-to-Ship Transfers as Bahri Stations 19 VLCCs Off Oman
Bahri has staged 19 VLCCs off Oman with 38-million-barrel combined capacity while Aramco runs ship-to-ship transfers to keep Asian crude deliveries moving outside the strait.
Two VLCCs carrying a combined 4 million barrels of Saudi crude were headed to China in late August (2026-08-26) after receiving their cargoes through ship-to-ship transfers off Sohar, on Oman's eastern coast, according to Vortexa and Kpler data cited by Reuters. Aramco was at that point offering additional September crude to Asian buyers through the same channel, after weeks of constrained tanker transit through the Strait of Hormuz.5
The transfers show how far Saudi Arabia's workaround has matured. Bahri, the state shipping company, had by mid-August (2026-08-18) positioned 16 VLCCs off Oman, with three more reportedly on the way, giving the fleet capacity to carry roughly 38 million barrels — enough to sustain several weeks of Asian-bound exports without a single vessel entering the strait.4
Saudi Arabia is not the only Gulf producer rerouting. The UAE, Iraq, Kuwait and Qatar were together moving more than 4 million barrels per day through a mix of AIS-dark shuttle tankers and STS operations outside the Persian Gulf, oilprice.com reported on August 18 (2026-08-18). Before the war, nearly 20 million barrels per day of crude and refined products, including diesel and fuel oil for South Asian refiners and eastern Mediterranean buyers, moved through the strait each day.4
ICE Brent crude front-month was trading at $103.37 a barrel on Friday (2026-09-18), having recovered from below $100 as recently as September 8 (2026-09-08), when reporting noted that non-Gulf producers were helping fill the supply gap. The U.S., Canada and Guyana were on track to add a combined 1.4 million barrels per day this year, partially offsetting the Gulf shortfall.7
The recovery in ICE Brent front-month reflects the scale of the diversion effort, even if it does not resolve the disruption. U.S. Navy escorts were moving roughly 6.5 million barrels per day through Hormuz in the final week of July (2026-07-30), according to comments made to Bloomberg Radio, while shuttle tanker and STS operations handled additional volumes outside the strait's contested approaches. Freight rates on southern Red Sea routes reached nearly $500,000 a day in that period, Rigzone reported.2
The pipeline infrastructure being built around Hormuz is slower to materialise. Saudi Arabia's East-West crude pipeline, connecting Gulf oil fields to the Red Sea export terminal at Yanbu, was running at some 7 million barrels per day in the early months of the war, above its standard 5-million-barrel-per-day capacity after Aramco converted natural gas liquids pipelines to crude service. ADNOC is planning a new West-East 1 Pipeline to double its export capacity through Fujairah, but Reuters has reported the project would cost at least $15 billion and take at least four years to complete.6,1
The financial cost of the disruption has been substantial. The global energy import bill grew by $330 billion across the six months from March through August 2026, the Centre for Energy Research and Clean Air reported at end-August (2026-08-31). Diesel markets absorbed a disproportionate share of that burden, given how much refined product previously cleared Hormuz into spot markets across Asia and the Middle East.6
Satellite images in mid-August (2026-08-11) showed cargo exchanges continuing off Oman despite a fresh round of attacks on the shuttle tanker network, Rigzone reported. Transfers were completing. But the attack environment had not settled.3
The EIA, in a pre-war assessment, estimated that roughly 3.5 million barrels per day of unused pipeline capacity across Gulf states could bypass the strait in a disruption scenario. The actual diversion — combining Bahri's VLCC staging fleet, the Gulf shadow tanker network and Saudi pipeline operations — runs well above that figure, based on available tracking data. Still, it remains far short of the near-20-million-barrel-per-day flow that transited Hormuz before the conflict. Building pipeline capacity sufficient to bypass even half of pre-war strait volumes would require infrastructure spanning multiple countries, oilprice.com noted.1,4
Whether renewed Houthi pressure on vessels operating in the Sohar zone forces a pause in STS transfers is what crude traders are tracking now. Diesel and fuel oil supply chains to nearby import markets would be the first to feel any squeeze if the transfer zone becomes too contested to operate.3,4