A Hormuz workaround is draining the global tanker fleet — and Europe and Asia are paying for it

A Hormuz workaround is draining the world’s supertanker fleet — and refiners everywhere are paying for it. Shipping a VLCC of US crude from Houtston to Asia now costs roughly USD 52 mn, or about USD 26 / bbl — equivalent to close a quarter of the value of WTI futures, Bloomberg reported. Freight used to be almost incidental to the economics of the barrel, but now it can determine whether the trade happens at all.

Hormuz turned one voyage into two

The workaround keeping Gulf crude moving through Hormuz is also helping drain the tanker pool. Instead of one VLCC inside the Gulf and sailing all the way to Asia, producers increasingly use a dedicated shuttle tanker to carry crude through Hormuz before transferring it ship-to-ship in safer waters off Oman to a second vessel for the long-haul leg.

That means two sets of freight economics for every barrel, not one. Owners are increasingly pricing the risky Hormuz crossing separately from the onward Gulf of Oman-Asia voyage, rather than treating the movement as a conventional round trip. The system reduces how long individual vessels need to spend inside the highest-risk waters, but requires more ships, additional positioning, and another cargo handoff to move the same barrel to its final buyer.

The scale of that workaround has jumped in a month. Around 2.5 mn bbl / d of crude is expected to load through STS transfers in the Gulf of Oman this month, up from 1.4 mn bbl / d in August and equivalent to roughly 40% of the crude currently moving through Hormuz. Overall exports through the strait have recovered to around 6.5 mn bbl / d so far in September, Reuters reports.

Saudi Arabia is leaning on that same system, even harder. Aramco had sold roughly 60 mn barrels from Ras Tanura for September and October loading through STS transfers at Sohar — equivalent to around 1-1.5 mn bbl / d — as it compensates for lower Red Sea exports following the East-West Pipeline shutdown. Early-October supertanker bookings reached around Worldscale 800, a sign of how much extra demand is landing on an already stretched fleet.

The squeeze is rewriting who buys what

Fewer available ships mean refiners are already breaking their usual rules to secure capacity. VLCCs on the benchmark Gulf-to-China route are earning upwards of USD 1.2 mn a day, while brokers say there are periods and locations where virtually no supertankers remain available for charter. Asian buyers are putting some US crude onto roughly 700k-barrel Aframaxes instead of waiting for VLCCs, while Atlantic cargoes are being split between two 1 mn-barrel Suezmaxes rather than loaded onto a single 2 mn-barrel supertanker — keeping the crude moving, but using more vessels to shift the same volume.

US-to-Asia crude flows have thinned out as freight roughly tripled. Japan’s refiners began looking closer to home — as one recently snapped up prompt Alaskan crude despite the grade not being an obvious fit for Japanese plants — while Angolan barrels that would normally travel thousands of miles to China are struggling to find buyers.

Europe is seeing the opposite problem: proximity is suddenly worth a fortune. Brent futures peaked around USD 110 / bbl last week, but physical Dated Brent moved above USD 130 / bbl as refiners chased barrels they could secure without paying for another intercontinental voyage. The scramble sharpened further after Saudi Arabia allocated no October term cargoes to European buyers, leaving refiners to compete for whatever nearby alternatives remain.