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Economy, business and finance
From Yanbu to Sohar: Tracking Saudi Arabia's alternative oil routes
The world's second-largest crude exporter is rerouting crude via dark shipments and ship-to-ship transfers off Oman.
Saudi Arabia’s oil exports took another blow last week when drone attacks knocked out part of the country’s East-West pipeline, halting oil flow and removing 4-5 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil from global supply.
It is unclear how long repairs will take, although The Associated Press estimates three to five weeks, citing two regional officials.
The 1,200km (746-mile) pipeline connects the kingdom’s main oil-producing fields in the east of the country with Yanbu port on the Red Sea coast in the west, allowing Saudi crude to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, which has largely remained closed since the United States-Israel war on Iran began on February 28.
As the world’s second-largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia’s ability to keep crude flowing has significant consequences for global energy markets. Al Jazeera asked experts what alternatives remain, how the disruption could affect buyers worldwide, and what it means for the kingdom’s revenues.
Total Saudi crude loadings, which topped 7.5 million bpd in January and February, had fallen to about 2.3 million bpd in August and roughly 2.1 million bpd in the first half of September – a drop of more than 70 percent.
Analysts caution the real loadings figure may run somewhat higher, since shuttle tankers crossing Hormuz with tracking switched off aren’t always captured in vessel data.
How can Saudi Arabia export its oil?
Saudi exports are built around two coastal passages – the Gulf in the east, where crude moves out through the Strait of Hormuz, and the Red Sea in the west, where it can travel either north through the Suez Canal and Sumed Pipeline, or south through the Bab al-Mandeb strait.
Before the crisis, most Saudi crude left on ships through the Strait of Hormuz, the 39km (24-mile) shipping choke point connecting the Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, and the open sea beyond.
Saudi Arabia was exporting about 7-8 million bpd of oil, with most seaborne volumes loading at the terminals of Ras Tanura and Ras al-Ju’aymah, and the former averaging about 5.4 million bpd in 2025.
The route is the most direct and economical way to reach Asia, which buys the bulk of Saudi crude exports.
With the western pipeline route closed and the Red Sea’s southern route hostile, Saudi Arabia has little choice but to push exports back through the Gulf – despite the restrictions, higher costs, and physical risk of attack that come with transiting Hormuz, experts say.
“With the East-West pipeline offline, Saudi’s options are limited. The first is shipping more crude from its Gulf terminals through the Strait of Hormuz, including ship-to-ship transfers outside the strait, such as off Sohar in Oman,” according to Rishi Rajanala, research specialist in Oil Americas at LSEG Data & Analytics.
“Gulf producers have already been moving part of their exports this way, but volumes depend on tanker availability, insurance and freight costs, and remain well below pre-war levels.
“The second is drawing on crude already stored on the west coast and at Egypt’s Ain Sukhna and Sidi Kerir terminals, which can continue to supply Europe through the Sumed Pipeline, but only for as long as stored volumes last. The third is a phased restart of the pipeline itself, depending on the extent of the damage.”
Richard Matthews, director of consultancy and research at Gibson Shipbrokers, a London-based shipping services company, said transiting back through Hormuz will “further fuel higher freight costs for Middle East exports and create additional inefficiencies”, adding, “we do not know how long Yanbu loadings will be suspended for, but it doesn’t look to be a quick fix.”
One way to reduce that risk is for tankers to go “dark” by switching off their AIS transponders – used in maritime navigation to identify and track vessels – as they transit Omani coastal waters. “They will transit with transponders off and likely coordinate with the US Navy but still face the risk of attack as everyone else does,” Matthews said.
If the outage extends beyond a few weeks, the balance shifts further: Stored volumes would run down, and any crude that cannot move through the Gulf would have to be stored or left unproduced, adding pressure to production levels already well below pre-war volumes in August.
Rahul Choudhary, vice president of Upstream Research at Rystad Energy, an independent energy research company, said Hormuz-route exports increased in September to more than two million bpd in the first two weeks, roughly one million bpd above August.
“We expect Strait of Hormuz exports to rise further in the second half of the month, already evident in Aramco offering additional loadings to Asian refiners out of Sohar. Saudi Arabia can lean further on dark tanker activity in the coming days to offset Yanbu losses,” he added.
Route two: The East-West pipeline to Yanbu
Most of Saudi Arabia’s crude is produced in the east, and Aramco’s East-West pipeline links the Ghawar and Abqaiq processing facilities there to Yanbu port on the opposite side of the country.
It was built in 1981, during the Iran-Iraq war, precisely to reduce reliance on the Strait of Hormuz in a crisis of the kind Saudi Arabia and other Gulf exporters are now facing.
It runs at a maximum capacity of about 7 million bpd.
Crude shipped from Yanbu has two ways to travel onward through the Red Sea – south via Bab al-Mandeb or north via Suez.
Shipments heading south to Asia must pass through the Bab al-Mandeb strait – the second-best route after Hormuz.
But Iran-backed Houthi forces launched a rapid military offensive in September, seizing the Yemeni port of Mocha, the coastal town of Dhubab, and Mayyun Island, and now control the strait. They have also declared a maritime embargo on Saudi Arabia, prohibiting vessels from loading or discharging cargo at Saudi ports.
With the southern exit blocked, tankers wishing to reach Asia must instead travel north.
Oil tankers can pass through the Suez Canal directly, or discharge their cargo at Egypt’s Ain Sokhna terminal on the Red Sea into the Sumed pipeline, which carries it overland across Egypt to a Mediterranean port near Alexandria, where it is reloaded onto tankers bound for Europe.
Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) are too large to transit the canal at full draft – the maximum safe depth when fully loaded – so they instead partially discharge at Ain Sokhna and reload the remaining volume at the Mediterranean terminal before continuing.
According to HSBC Global Investment Research, Aramco had planned a similar “shuttling” operation before Yanbu was suspended, using smaller Suezmax tankers to move crude between Yanbu and Ain Sokhna.
From there, reaching Asian buyers means sailing west through the Strait of Gibraltar and around the Cape of Good Hope – a journey of about 13,140 nautical miles (equivalent to about 24,335km) that dwarfs the roughly 3,370 nautical miles (6,241km), 10-day journey via Hormuz, adding almost a month to the voyage and making shipping far more expensive while tying up tankers for longer.
But some experts expect the East-West pipeline to resume operations sooner, offering hope that Saudi oil exports could return to more sustainable levels.
Choudhary said: “We expect the pipeline to restart within a couple of weeks at a reduced 40-60 percent capacity, flowing around 2.5-3 million bpd. With Saudi likely to prioritise refinery runs, only about 0.5-1 million bpd would be left for export, meaning Yanbu crude exports fall by 2.5-3 million bpd even after a partial restart.
“Part of that gap can be covered by higher Hormuz liftings and increased dark-fleet activity, bringing the net impact on Saudi crude exports down to roughly 1.5-2 million bpd.”
One option conspicuously absent from Saudi planning is trucking – and the maths explains why. The kingdom typically exports 5-7 million bpd. Replacing even a single day’s volume by road would require roughly 25,000 to 35,000 fully loaded tanker trucks, each carrying about 200 barrels.
Lined up bumper-to-bumper, that convoy would stretch nearly 500km (310 miles) – roughly the distance from Riyadh to the nearest coast.
A single VLCC, by comparison, carries about 2 million barrels in one voyage, and the pipeline itself moves millions of barrels daily with minimal manpower – which is why, even with its main export arteries compromised, Saudi Arabia’s fallback plan runs through ships, not roads.
Oil prices have so far been cushioned by stockpiles and releases from strategic reserves, with Brent crude trading at about $70-$90 a barrel in recent months. But the longer regional disruptions continue, the more we may see prices rise, with Brent crude currently trading above $105 a barrel.
“The market is pricing a significant loss of supply, with the length of the outage as the main uncertainty. Saudi authorities have not given a timeline for the repair, and estimates reported so far range from a few days to eight weeks for a full recovery,” Rajanala, the research specialist at LSEG, said.
What does this mean for buyers of Saudi oil?
Saudi Arabia was, until recently, the world’s largest oil exporter.
Its main buyers are Asian and European refiners, including China, which bought 22 percent of Saudi Arabia’s oil, followed by South Korea (14 percent), Japan (13 percent), India (10 percent) and the US (5 percent).
Those buyers are already feeling the shutdown. Cargoes scheduled for European refiners are being cancelled, forcing many companies to look elsewhere for their oil, including turning to the US, North Sea and West Africa.
“Some European refiners with cancelled Saudi cargoes are already sourcing crude from the North Sea and seeking cargoes from the Americas and Central Asia, while Asian buyers are being offered alternative loadings from the Gulf,” Rajanala said.
“The missing barrels are also higher sulphur crude. Saudi grades such as Arab Light and Arab Medium are difficult to replace, like-for-like, because the alternatives available from the US, Kazakhstan and much of the North Sea are generally lower in sulphur content. That puts particular pressure on refiners configured for Middle East crude, many of them in Asia, which takes the largest share of Saudi exports.”
What does this mean for Saudi Arabia’s revenues?
Despite higher oil prices benefitting Saudi Arabia, they are being offset by an inability to physically export at normal volumes.
The government depends heavily on dividends, royalties and taxes from Aramco, with its crude and petroleum products sales accounting for more than half of government revenues, generating 606.5 billion riyals ($162bn) for state coffers in 2025.
Sustained disruption would cut deep into public finances. UBS Research now forecasts the 2026 budget deficit reaching 5 percent of gross domestic product against an original target of 3.3 percent.
Louis Vincent-Gave, from Gavekal Research, an independent research firm, noted that “the bombing of Yanbu, combined with the bombing of the East-West pipeline, and the Houthi takeover of the Bab el-Mandab sea passage, suddenly places large question marks on the ability of Saudi oil to keep flowing through the Red Sea to the rest of the world. And if Saudi Arabia cannot keep pumping oil to the rest of the world, the Saudi government could end up selling assets – US treasuries? Stakes in private equity funds? Artificial intelligence investments? – to pay its immediate bills.”
