Oil Tankers Increase Hormuz Transits as Transfers Rise Off Oman
Satellite images show 16 tankers clustered off Oman transferring oil over the weekend. Roughly 2 million barrels a day are now flowing out of the Gulf.
middleeasteye.netSatellite imagery from the European Union’s Copernicus browser identified 16 tankers clustered together off the coast of Oman over the weekend transferring millions of barrels of oil. A month earlier, that area had been entirely empty. com Inc.
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Identified 12 ships with non-Iranian Middle Eastern barrels conducting ship-to-ship transfers outside Hormuz on June 6. Ships engaging in the transfers had their satellite transponders switched off. At least some of the vessels crossed under cover of darkness with lights switched off, Bloomberg reported.
Crews have been instructed to stay off the radio. Approximately 2 million barrels a day of oil and related products are now flowing out of the Gulf, according to Rapidan Energy Group. Before the effective blockade, the strait handled around a fifth of all oil supply in a global market of more than 100 million barrels a day.
Oil prices have fallen almost 30% from their peak at the height of the war, JPMorgan data showed. President Trump said in a social media post on Wednesday that “lots of oil is getting out” of Hormuz. ” Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have offered to sell oil outside Hormuz in recent days.
Satellite imagery shows a steady run of ships loading at UAE oil terminals in recent weeks. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co (ADNOC) sold at least 14 million barrels of its oil in a tender that concluded at the end of last week. Those cargoes are due to start loading this month.
ADNOC has moved crude through Hormuz with transponders off. The company has continued to ship barrels at a healthy rate across the strait in recent weeks, according to two people familiar with its operations. An oil tanker was seen loading on six of the eight days there were images at Zirku Island in May, according to Copernicus data.
