With their location trackers shut off to avoid Iranian attacks, the United Arab Emirates and buyers have recently sailed several tankers loaded with crude through the Strait of Hormuz in a bid to move oil bottled up in the Gulf by the Middle East conflict, Reuters reports citing industry sources and shipping data.
The volumes are a fraction of the UAE’s typical exports before the US-Israeli war on Iran, but they demonstrate the risks the producer and buyers are willing to take to free up oil sales.
The other Gulf producers — Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar — have either halted sales, deeply cut prices to entice uninterested buyers or are shipping only through the Red Sea, in the case of Saudi Arabia.
In April, the UAE’s Abu Dhabi National Oil Co managed to export at least 4 million barrels of its Upper Zakum crude and 2 million barrels of Das crude on four tankers from terminals inside the Gulf, according to three sources, shiptracking data from Kpler and an analysis of satellite data from SynMax.
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