ULSAN — The crude oil shipping routes serving Ulsan Port have changed sharply in the wake of the war in the Middle East. As navigation risks mounted in the Strait of Hormuz, crude arriving via ports outside the strait — including the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman — and from outside the Middle East has become the main channel, replacing ports inside the Persian Gulf.
Ulsan Customs said on the 13th that of the 41.897 million tons of crude oil brought into Ulsan Port between January and September, the share loaded at ports inside the Strait of Hormuz fell from 79.5% in January to zero in September, according to its analysis of loading-port trends at the port for the period. The share from Middle Eastern ports outside the strait, such as those on the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman, surged to 70.6% from 8.4% over the same period. Crude loaded outside the Middle East — in the U.S., Canada and Africa — also expanded to 29.3% from 12.1%.
The realignment of Ulsan Port's crude supply chain became pronounced after the war in the Middle East broke out in late February. In January and February, before the war, ports inside the strait — Saudi Arabia's Ras Tanura, Kuwait's Mina al-Ahmadi and Iraq's Basra — accounted for 74.3% of the total. But their share plunged from March as transport risks escalated, falling to just 3.6% from April through September, with no arrivals at all in April and September.
Red Sea terminals and transfer hubs in the Gulf of Oman filled the gap. Yanbu, the Red Sea port connected to Saudi Arabia's east-west pipeline, shipped 2.218 million tons, or 47.6% of the total, in June alone, making it Ulsan Port's largest loading port. Volumes from Oman's Sohar, a hub for ship-to-ship transfers of crude, rose to 962,000 tons in August from 281,000 tons in June, while the United Arab Emirates' Fujairah logged about 1 million tons each month from June through August. As a result, Middle Eastern ports outside the strait held a share of 63% to 80% from June through August.
That multi-hub arrangement continued in September. Arrivals rose 12.7% from the previous month to 5.134 million tons. Of that, Middle Eastern ports outside the strait accounted for 70.6%, including Yanbu with 1.989 million tons, Fujairah with 1.083 million tons and Sohar with 553,000 tons. In the same month, arrivals from Corpus Christi in the U.S. jumped to 704,000 tons and suppliers outside the Middle East including Canada, Russia and Gabon added volumes, lifting the non-Middle East share to 29.3%.
Ulsan Customs noted, however, that even when a loading port lies outside the strait, crude produced inside the Persian Gulf is in some cases transferred and loaded in waters outside it, meaning the Strait of Hormuz may not have been bypassed entirely across the full route.
An Ulsan Customs official said changes in the international maritime shipping environment since the war in the Middle East have been directly reflected in the loading-port structure of Ulsan Port, the country's largest energy import gateway, and that the agency plans to continue monitoring supply chain trends in response to geopolitical risks.