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Middle East Crude Exports Climb to 12.8 Million Barrels a Day, Highest Since War Began
Crude oil exports from the Middle East’s major producers rebounded in September to 12.8 million barrels a day, the highest level recorded since the US-Israeli war with Iran began in late February, according to preliminary data from Kpler released Monday. The recovery was led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both of which meaningfully increased shipments through the month.
The pickup traces largely to a recovery in exports moving through the Strait of Hormuz, which are on track to reach roughly 7.4 million barrels a day this month. Saudi Arabia contributed to that rebound in part by rerouting exports away from its Red Sea port of Yanbu, after attacks damaged the kingdom’s East-West pipeline and forced a shift in how it moves crude to market. Even with that rebound, total exports from the wider region, which Kpler defines as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait and Iran, remain roughly 6 million barrels a day below the 18.8 million barrels a day the region was shipping in February, just before the conflict began. Kpler estimated in a Monday note that Middle East crude exports currently sit at just under 80 percent of pre-conflict levels, a meaningful recovery from the depths of the disruption but still a substantial shortfall against where the region stood at the start of the year.
Saudi Arabia’s own numbers illustrate the scale of the turnaround. The kingdom, the region’s top exporter, was on track to ship about 5.4 million barrels a day in September, up sharply from just 2.446 million barrels a day in August. Shipments from the Ras Tanura port in the Gulf, one of Saudi Arabia’s key loading points, jumped to roughly 3.6 million barrels a day, compared with only 929,000 barrels a day the month before, though that figure still trails the 6.411 million barrels a day Ras Tanura was moving back in February. Tanker traffic backs up the broader trend: a total of 19 very large crude carriers, each capable of holding around 2 million barrels of Saudi oil, exited the Strait of Hormuz over the past week alone.
Those figures need some context to understand how disruptive the war has actually been to global shipping through the strait. Before the conflict began on February 28, the Strait of Hormuz typically handled around 125 large commercial vessels a day, spanning oil tankers, gas carriers, bulk cargo ships and container vessels, accounting for roughly a fifth of the world’s daily supply of crude oil and liquefied natural gas combined. Reaching even 80 percent of pre-war export volumes represents genuine progress against that baseline, but it also underscores how much capacity the conflict has stripped out of one of the world’s most important shipping corridors for the better part of seven months now.
Kpler’s director of commodity research, Matt Smith, offered a read on what’s actually driving the improvement, telling CNBC last week that the ramp-up in exports from the Mideast Gulf is partly a direct consequence of the pipeline outage forcing Saudi Arabia to reroute shipments, but that it likely also reflects growing confidence among shippers in using the Strait of Hormuz again given the rising volume of traffic now moving through it. That’s a notable shift in tone from earlier in the conflict, when tanker operators were considerably more hesitant to send vessels through the strait given the risk of attacks on shipping.
Other producers in the region appear to be following the same trend. Kpler reported a combined daily export total of 13.2 million barrels for last Wednesday specifically, an improvement on the month’s overall average, though still well short of the roughly 17 million barrels a day the region was averaging before the war began.
It’s worth flagging one limitation in how these figures are compiled. Kpler’s tracking excludes any vessels that may have crossed the strait with their Automatic Identification System transponders switched off, a tactic sometimes used to avoid detection while moving through contested or sanctioned waters. That means the true volume of oil moving out of the region could be somewhat higher than the reported figures suggest, though by how much is impossible to know with any precision.
The export rebound arrives even as oil prices themselves have continued climbing, a combination that might seem contradictory at first glance but reflects the underlying dynamics of the market right now. Much of the increased export volume still relies on costlier, less efficient workarounds like ship-to-ship transfers rather than a full return to normal shipping routes, and traders have continued pricing in a substantial risk premium given that US-Iran negotiations remain deadlocked with no clear resolution in sight. In other words, more oil is moving, but it’s moving at a higher cost and against a backdrop of persistent uncertainty, which is why rising export volumes and rising prices have been able to coexist through most of September rather than one offsetting the other.
