Saudi Arabia Pivots to Covert Tanker Routes and Offshore Transfers Following Critical Pipeline Attack

Saudi Arabia has been forced to revamp its crude export logistics, turning to unmonitored tanker voyages and offshore ship-to-ship transfers after drone strikes severely compromised a crucial pipeline. The disruption has paralyzed flows along the kingdom's primary overland bypass, removing an estimated 4 million to 5 million barrels per day of oil from international circulation and intensifying strain on worldwide energy supplies.

The outage centers on the kingdom’s 1,200-kilometer (746-mile) East-West pipeline, an infrastructure asset designed to transport crude from productive oilfields in the east directly to the Red Sea terminal of Yanbu. This overland conduit has served as a vital alternative to maritime transit through the Strait of Hormuz, which has suffered near-total disruption since the outbreak of the United States-Israel war against Iran on February 28.

Regional officials cited by The Associated Press have indicated that repairing the damaged pipeline infrastructure could require between three and five weeks. With the duration of the outage still uncertain, the world's second-largest oil producer faces escalating obstacles in sustaining deliveries to its international customers and stabilizing its national revenues.

The pipeline shutdown delivers another heavy blow to Saudi export volumes, which have plummeted over the course of the regional conflict. Total crude loadings, which exceeded 7.5 million barrels per day across January and February, fell sharply to approximately 2.3 million barrels per day in August and stood near 2.1 million barrels per day during the first half of September, representing an overall reduction of more than 70 percent.

Maritime analysts note that actual export volumes may moderately exceed official tracking figures. This discrepancy arises because shuttle vessels navigating through the Strait of Hormuz frequently deactivate their automatic identification systems, preventing their movements from being fully documented in conventional vessel monitoring databases.

Traditionally, Saudi Arabia’s outbound petroleum flows rely on two primary geographic corridors. To the east, crude departs through Gulf terminals and passes through the Strait of Hormuz. To the west, oil moves via the Red Sea, where cargoes can travel northward toward European buyers through the Suez Canal and the Sumed Pipeline, or southward through the Bab al-Mandeb strait.

Prior to the current geopolitical crisis, the vast majority of Saudi seaborne exports moved through the 39-kilometer (24-mile) maritime bottleneck at Hormuz, reaching key Asian markets that consume the bulk of the kingdom's crude. Most of these volumes loaded at major eastern marine terminals, including Ras al-Ju’aymah and Ras Tanura, the latter of which handled an average of roughly 5.4 million barrels per day in 2025.

Because the East-West pipeline is out of commission and the southern passage through the Red Sea remains exposed to hostile threats, Saudi authorities have been left with few alternatives other than redirecting crude back toward the Gulf. This shift forces shipments through Hormuz despite elevated security hazards, soaring maritime freight charges, and strict operational constraints.

According to Rishi Rajanala, an oil research specialist at LSEG Data & Analytics, the kingdom's current options are severely constrained. Rajanala explained that the primary strategy involves dispatching higher volumes from eastern Gulf facilities through Hormuz, which includes conducting ship-to-ship cargo transfers in waters outside the passage, particularly off the coast of Sohar in Oman.

Rajanala pointed out that regional producers have already utilized these ship-to-ship methods, though aggregate volumes remain constrained by commercial freight costs, insurance rates, and vessel availability. He noted that Saudi Arabia can also draw down emergency inventories previously stored at western coastal sites and Egypt’s Ain Sukhna and Sidi Kerir terminals to feed Europe via the Sumed Pipeline, though such relief will only last until existing reserves are exhausted before a phased restart of the damaged pipeline can occur.

To mitigate maritime vulnerabilities during transit, participating tankers have increasingly opted to go "dark" by disabling their automated tracking transponders while traversing Omani territorial waters. Richard Matthews, head of consultancy and research at London-based Gibson Shipbrokers, noted that while these vessels frequently coordinate movements with the United States Navy, operating without active transponders cannot entirely shield them from the risk of hostile strikes.

Matthews warned that returning to Hormuz transit routes will compound supply inefficiencies and drive Middle Eastern shipping rates significantly higher. He emphasized that the suspension of loadings at Yanbu does not appear to be a problem with an immediate remedy, warning that prolonged closures will quickly drain stockpiles on the western coast.

Should repair timelines drag on past several weeks, the operational strain on the kingdom will intensify dramatically. Once regional storage facilities are filled to capacity and backup stockpiles in Egypt run low, crude that cannot be safely navigated through the Gulf will have to be left unproduced, placing severe downward pressure on output levels that are already trailing pre-war benchmarks.

Despite these hurdles, early indicators show Saudi Arabia is actively pushing to expand its Gulf exports to compensate for the offline pipeline. Rahul Choudhary, vice president of upstream research at Rystad Energy, observed that export volumes transiting the Strait of Hormuz rose above 2 million barrels per day during the first two weeks of September, marking an increase of about 1 million barrels per day compared to August.

Choudhary anticipated that outbound volumes via Hormuz would climb further through the latter half of September. This trend is already evidenced by state oil company Saudi Aramco offering supplementary crude allocations to Asian refiners via offshore transfers near Sohar, leaning heavily on unmonitored shuttle tanker operations to offset the acute losses sustained at Yanbu.