{"id":829,"date":"2026-09-26T03:38:34","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T03:38:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/gulf-of-oman-sts-transfers-hit-their-limit-as-saudi-hormuz-exports-rebound\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T03:38:34","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T03:38:34","slug":"gulf-of-oman-sts-transfers-hit-their-limit-as-saudi-hormuz-exports-rebound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regulasshipping.com\/blog\/gulf-of-oman-sts-transfers-hit-their-limit-as-saudi-hormuz-exports-rebound\/","title":{"rendered":"Gulf of Oman STS transfers hit their limit as Saudi Hormuz exports rebound"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ship-to-ship transfers of Middle Eastern oil in the Gulf of Oman have reached their practical limits after Saudi Arabia diverted crude away from the Red Sea, trade sources and analysts told Reuters in Singapore on Friday, 25 September. The constraint is no longer only whether a shuttle can get through the Strait of Hormuz. It is whether Fujairah and Sohar still have tugs, fenders, hose gangs and receiving hulls for the extra Saudi barrels that have piled on top of Iraqi and Emirati STS programmes. The same Friday file said the extra shuttle demand has cut ship availability, pushed freight higher and lengthened the time cargo stays on the water before it reaches a refinery. That is a logistics ceiling on a wartime workaround, not a statement that Gulf exports have stopped.<\/p>\n

Saudi Aramco has sold more than 60 million barrels of crude for STS off Sohar this month and next, Reuters reported, after the East\u2013West pipeline was attacked and Yanbu loadings halted. That sale was already the subject of the 19 September Regulas note. Friday\u2019s primary is different: Kpler now has Saudi crude exports via Hormuz on track to rebound to 3.6 million barrels a day in September, from about 900,000 barrels a day in August. Panagiotis Krontiras, a Kpler tanker freight analyst, told Reuters that the nearly 3 million-barrel-a-day increase would require between 36 and 40 more very large crude carriers. Each VLCC lifts about 2 million barrels. Al-Monitor, also on Friday, quoted Krontiras saying the region is \u201cgradually meeting its current operational limits, also evident by the sheer scaling of operations,\u201d and cited Kpler liquids STS in the Gulf of Oman averaging 8.2 million barrels a day from 1 to 24 September, against a wartime average of 3.7 million barrels a day from 28 February to 21 September and 160,000 barrels a day in 2025.<\/p>\n

A shuttle that now waits for tugs, not only for a transit slot<\/h2>\n

Before the Iran war began on 28 February, most Gulf crude other than Iranian barrels was lifted directly by the buyer. The wartime pattern is a shuttle that runs Hormuz, often dark, and comes alongside a receiving ship off Sohar or Fujairah so the ocean-going hull never has to take a counted strait transit of its own. Vortexa analysts said in a 21 September note that VLCC STS operations have \u201cstruggled to keep pace,\u201d with crude loaded on VLCCs from ports west of Hormuz stuck around 6 million barrels a day since the end of August \u2014 roughly three VLCC pairs starting STS each day. Vortexa analyst Emma Li said congestion near the strait is getting worse because of long STS queues, and that an operation now takes nearly 10 days, against five to seven days earlier. Chinese buyers have started asking sellers for alternative STS locations off the west coast of India or Malaysia, or for direct delivery to refineries.<\/p>\n

Anoop Singh, head of global shipping research at Oil Brokerage, said in a 23 September note that the number of additional VLCCs required to move the same amount of oil as before the war has risen to 40 this month, from 24 in August. \u201cThat 2 million bpd uplift in Saudi flows will generate additional demand for 15 VLCCs for shuttle runs alone,\u201d he wrote, adding that another 20 VLCCs are effectively trapped in the Mediterranean awaiting Yanbu\u2019s return. The freight print that sits on top of those hulls is already on the blog: the 20 September Regulas note covered Baltic TD3C time-charter equivalent above $1.2 million a day. Friday\u2019s Reuters file said LSEG put the Middle East\u2013China VLCC daily rate at a record $1.27 million on Monday. That is the same market, not a new earnings story. It is the price of keeping more ships inside a shuttle that now spends almost a fortnight waiting for a berth alongside another tanker.<\/p>\n

Kpler\u2019s own 21 September note is the operational map behind Friday\u2019s quotes. Shore-side support at Fujairah and Sohar is reported at or close to maximum. Moving the same extra Saudi barrels to west-coast India adds more than four days to the observed 17-day Gulf of Oman round voyage; offshore Malaysia more than doubles it to about 38.5 days. Monthly export capacity per extra VLCC falls from about 0.12 million barrels a day in the Gulf of Oman to 0.09 off west-coast India and 0.05 off Malaysia. For a 3 million-barrel-a-day redirection from Yanbu, Kpler\u2019s GoO shuttle case needs about 25 extra VLCCs; west-coast India about 32; Malaysia as many as 58, against a current shuttle fleet Kpler puts around 54 ships. Those figures are a fleet-productivity warning. They are not a sailing window, and they are not a claim that Malaysia or Vadinar has already absorbed the September Saudi increment.<\/p>\n

Direct stems, Indian lightering and a line that is not yet loading<\/h2>\n

Some owners are already stepping past the Sohar queue. Kpler and LSEG data showed the Bahri-operated VLCC Gold Shine<\/em> loading 2 million barrels of Saudi crude at Ras Tanura earlier this week and heading for Quanzhou, where Sinochem and Fujian Refining, partly owned by Aramco, operate separate plants. Bahri did not respond to Reuters; Aramco declined to comment. A Middle East crude trader told Reuters that S-Oil, the South Korean refiner majority-owned by Aramco, is sending two VLCCs to STS off Vadinar on India\u2019s west coast. S-Oil did not comment. A tanker owner who tracks the Malacca Strait told Reuters there have been more crude transfers off Malaysia\u2019s Linggi hub. A Singapore broker said it can be cheaper to discharge a supertanker into smaller ships for North Asia than to send the large hull all the way. Those are commercial workarounds around a full STS pad, not evidence that the Gulf of Oman system has spare capacity again.<\/p>\n

The inland line that was supposed to keep this oil out of Hormuz is still not a load-port alternative. Tuesday\u2019s Reuters file, covered in the 23 September Regulas note, said Petroline had restarted at a low rate after the 11 September Iraq-origin drone stop, with three of 11 pumping stations damaged and a full-rate return still six to eight weeks away. Thursday\u2019s war-risk file, covered yesterday, said Yanbu loadings had yet to resume on industry, satellite and AIS evidence, with quoted cover for a Saudi-linked Yanbu tanker around 3 percent of hull value and ports south of Yanbu up to 7 percent. Macron\u2019s Thursday offer of soldiers, radars and defence systems for the terminal does not create STS slots off Sohar and does not put 20 idle Mediterranean VLCCs back into the Gulf shuttle. A constrained pipeline restart and a 10-day STS queue can sit together: the barrels that cannot leave Yanbu are arriving at Ras Tanura instead, and the receiving side outside Hormuz has run out of easy pairs.<\/p>\n

None of this reopens the strait as a normal commodity lane. Friday\u2019s Kpler\/Reuters AIS print, used only as context here and already flagged so it is not rewritten as a dedicated transit-count article, put Thursday\u2019s visible Hormuz commodity transits at nine against a 10-day average of 18 and a pre-war daily figure of about 125. AIS-off shuttles are excluded from that count, which is why a 3.6 million-barrel Saudi Hormuz programme can coexist with a single-digit AIS day. CENTCOM\u2019s 115 redirected hulls, Iran\u2019s unenacted 20 percent cargo-penalty articles, and the 80-country UNGA call for a no-toll reopen remain the political and enforcement backdrop. They do not add fenders at Sohar. Operators who treat a Gulf STS as the cheap, low-risk way around both Hormuz projectiles and a Houthi Saudi-association rule are now pricing a 10-day wait, a record Middle East\u2013China VLCC hire, and a growing chance that the next stem is sent to Vadinar, Linggi or a direct China berth instead.<\/p>\n

What Operators Should Note<\/h2>\n