Saudi state-controlled Aramco has begun offering its customers in Asia-Pacific the option of loading crude from its Red Sea port of Yanbu, as an alternative to taking shipments through the strait of Hormuz, sources with knowledge of the matter told Argus on Tuesday.
Shipments through Hormuz have been complicated by the escalating conflict in the Middle East, which has seen Tehran retaliate for the weekend's US and Israeli attacks by launching missile and drone strikes across the region and threatening shipping. Traffic through the strait has largely halted, and many marine insurers are now declining to provide cover for any vessels proposing to pass through the waterway.
Yanbu mostly handles exports of Arab Light crude. It has exported other grades, but only very irregularly. Aramco can divert more crude to Yanbu through the East–West pipeline, which has capacity of 7mn b/d after a recent program of debottlenecking, sources said.
It was not immediately clear how much crude can actually be loaded on tankers at Yanbu. Several sources said the port's nameplate capacity is 3mn b/d, but historically loadings have not exceeded 2mn b/d.
Two Asia-Pacific refiners said they would now have to load Saudi crude from Yanbu, and the supply will probably be Arab Light. Asian buyers typically prefer heavier Arab grades. A source said refineries would still have to buy some long-haul heavier grades from the Americas to get an optimal feedstock for their plants.
Yanbu typically only ships around one very large crude carrier (VLCC) of crude a month to customers in Asia, mainly in Japan and South Korea, according to data from trade analytics platform Kpler. China, the largest export destination for Saudi crude, last received a shipment from Yanbu in 2020.
Shipments from Yanbu to Asia-Pacific have to travel south through the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb strait, itself a hazardous route because of the risk of attack from Yemen-based Houthi militants. The group has said it will resume operations following the US and Israeli attacks on Iran.
Aramco's European customers also receive crude from Yanbu, albeit indirectly — supplies are typically shipped from Yanbu to Ain Sukhna in Egypt, where they are put through the Sumed pipeline to Egypt's port of Sidi Kerir for onward export into the Mediterranean. Aramco shipped around 560,000 b/d of crude to northwest Europe and the Mediterranean on this route in 2025, according to data from Vortexa.
