Middle East Oil Flows Near Prewar Levels Defy Hormuz Attacks

By Julian Lee (Bloomberg) — Oil shipments from the Middle East are showing little sign of buckling in the face of Iran’s more frequent and damaging attacks on merchant ships in the region.

Crude and condensate flows from the Persian Gulf hit a high of 24.6 million barrels a day in the week to Oct. 18, according to data provider Kpler. However, shipments are volatile and figures for the average of October to date remain below prewar levels. Loadings tend to happen in bunches, with ships traveling in convoys through the Strait of Hormuz, shuttling cargoes to tankers waiting outside the waterway before returning to reload.

Figures from rival data firm Vortexa don’t show the same weekly surge, highlighting the difficulty of establishing export levels as most tankers are currently operating with their positioning signals turned off. It pegs flows over the same seven-day period at 18 million barrels a day. Both companies estimate flows before the conflict was at least 18.5 million barrels a day. 

The continued strong volumes despite the Iranian attacks show the desire for Middle Eastern producers to keep moving their barrels. Oil forms the backbone of the countries’ economies and they’ve been competing for customers in recent months to make up for billions of dollars of missed sales during the conflict.

For October so far, Kpler pegs Middle East flows at 16.7 million barrels a day, while Vortexa puts it at 15.4 million. Kpler aggregates its numbers from Hormuz transits, net flows via ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman, exports through Red Sea ports and those on the Gulf of Oman in the United Arab Emirates and Oman. The Vortexa numbers sum shipments from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Oman.

The resilience comes as producers including Iraq are sending more volumes through Hormuz while Saudi Arabia is sending oil out from both its Persian Gulf and Red Sea coast. The kingdom boosted production by a third in September to over 8 million barrels a day, recovering from the lowest in more than three decades in the previous month. The UAE, one of the most successful in moving tankers through Hormuz, has pushed its production to record-high levels, according to the International Energy Agency.

These efforts appear to be holding up in spite of a spate of attacks in the waterway that’s also sunk at least one container ship this month. UK Maritime Trade Operations, a unit of the country’s navy, has reported 32 attacks on ships around the Arabian peninsula so far this month, compared with 16 in the whole of September. Some of these have struck ships’ engine rooms, inflicting more severe damage.

“Attacks on merchant vessels around the Strait have increased sharply in recent weeks,” Morgan Stanley analysts including Martijn Rats wrote in a note. Still, “oil flow through the strait has remained relatively resilient,” they added.

Shipments are proving strong with fleets owned by the producing countries and a few gutsy shipowners keeping crude flows close to last month’s levels that were the highest since the conflict began. The UAE, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are among nations that have shuttled their oil through Hormuz in their own tankers, and delivered the cargo to customers’ vessels outside the strait.

The levels are also significant because of the complete loss of Iran’s exports following a US blockade of the country’s ports. Both Kpler and Vortexa estimate the Islamic Republic was shipping close to 2 million barrels a day in February.

The assessments of Mideast flows are subject to change as tankers operating in the Persian Gulf and Red Sea with their automatic information systems switched off make real-time tracking more complicated. The process is hampered further by the withholding of satellite imagery over the region. As a result, shipments are frequently only recorded several days after they occur, leading to upward revisions.

The shuttling service and the tendency for tankers to move in convoys have also made exports lumpy at times, with brief surges followed by periods of relative slowdown.

For example, satellite images of the biggest Saudi oil terminal in the Persian Gulf show five very large crude carriers loading at the seven moorings on Oct. 12 and 13, but the number had fallen to just one on Oct. 20. The pattern is similar at other oil ports in the Persian Gulf and on the Red Sea.

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