The Workaround Closed So Saudi Used The Strait

Saudi Aramco loaded 14 million barrels of crude onto seven VLCCs at Gulf terminals on Sunday as it ramps up exports through the Strait of Hormuz, per shipping data. Satellite images seen by Reuters appear to show seven tankers near Ras Tanura. Saudi shipments through Hormuz have averaged 2.9 million barrels a day against 700,000 in August. Brent fell 2.6% to $101.18 on Monday and WTI dropped below $98. Weekend transits: 17 commodity vessels, against roughly 125 large commercial vessels a day before the war.

The parent's point was that the fourth closure was not a chokepoint — it was the workaround, the East-West pipeline to Yanbu. When it went down, the expectation was a harder squeeze. Instead Saudi Arabia went back into the strait it had spent the war avoiding, at close to four times its August pace, and the market priced it as supply rather than risk. That contests the parent's framing that the chokepoints would not reopen together: Hormuz is open to at least one exporter at scale. What the data cannot tell you is why. Iran published a 77-vessel enforcement list the same week. Saudi tankers moving at this pace means the passage was paid for, a deal was struck, or escorts are working. A single unconfirmed report describes a government-to-government payment. The flow data fits it — and fits the other two explanations just as well. None of this reaches the product side. This is crude, and refining capacity is still the binding constraint: retail diesel set a record $6.51 the same morning crude fell.