Saudi Crude Floods Asia Via Hormuz Amid Pipeline Outage

Saudi Arabia has ramped up its crude oil exports to Asia via the Strait of Hormuz, selling almost 100 million barrels since last week's pipeline outage. This is roughly one day's worth of global oil demand, according to trade sources with knowledge of the deals.

The Kingdom is offering to handle logistics and ship cargoes to Asian buyers, including Chinese refiners, state-owned and private, as well as refineries in India, South Korea, and Japan. Saudi Aramco has increased shuttle-shipping through Hormuz, more than doubling recent flows of crude from the route.

The surge in Saudi oil exports via Hormuz comes despite partial restoration of the East-West pipeline's operations this week. However, full resumption of flows at 4 million barrels per day is expected to take weeks. Meanwhile, soaring Saudi sales of crude through Hormuz will maintain some supply to Asia while Red Sea exports recover.