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Middle East oil shuttling via Hormuz helps hold Brent near $80-$90
Reports cited volumes above market estimates of 4 million barrels a day, and said flows were running higher even as Iran war tensions kept vessel attacks ongoing.
Middle Eastern oil producers are continuing to move large volumes of crude through and around the Persian Gulf amid the Iran war, a shipping pattern that is helping limit price spikes, according to people with knowledge of the shipments cited by Bloomberg via Yahoo Finance.
The transfers involve so-called dark vessel crossings through the Strait of Hormuz, used to move oil undetected by ferrying barrels onto tankers in the Gulf of Oman, even after attacks on vessels. The shuttling has been ongoing for months, and while it has become a lifeline for global markets worried about a major supply shock, the shipments remain far from normal because ships are still subject to repeated hostility, the people said.
Tracking the amount moved is difficult because the vessels provide little location information to protect themselves, the report added. The volumes are running higher than market estimates of 4 million barrels a day, though the cited sources did not specify how much higher.
Before the Iran war, about 20 million barrels a day crossed Hormuz, roughly a fifth of global supply, the report said. US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said last week that 9 million barrels a day crossed Hormuz over the previous seven days, a figure that surprised traders, and Brent oil futures have spent much of August trading between $80 and $90 a barrel instead of the much higher levels some had feared, according to Bloomberg.
Latest closeWTI crude $82.40 ▲1.4%|Brent $88.59 ▲1.8%