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Good morning, friends. We have a bit of a moving morning: ports, planes, and barrels.
DP World is taking its Jebel Ali playbook to Nigeria: The Dubai operator and Ogun State signed an MoU to build a USD 7 bn deep-sea port and industrial zone big enough to take ships the congested Lagos corridor can't handle.
Qatar's Lesha Bank, meanwhile, just went shopping for jets again. The bank is buying a 33-aircraft portfolio from Irish lessor Avolon — its second major aviation deal in under a month.
And Middle East crude exports are having their best month since the disruptions began. Seven major producers are on track to ship 12.8 mn bbl/d in September, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE — real progress, though still about 6 mn bbl/d short of where things stood in February.
We’re delighted to welcome Todd Wilcox as a guest speaker at the 2026 EnterpriseAM Egypt Forum.
Todd Wilcox is the deputy chairman and CEO of HSBC Bank Egypt, bringing more than 30 years of international banking experience. He joined Egypt from HSBC China, where he served as Senior Executive Vice President, Deputy CEO, and Executive Director of the Board.
Todd has held a series of senior leadership roles across HSBC, including CEO of Brunei for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, CRO for Asia-Pacific overseeing 11 markets, and COO for Risk across all Asian markets. He also served as head of retail banking and marketing at HSBC Bermuda, and began his career with HSBC in Canada. Prior to HSBC, Todd worked at Royal Bank of Canada across a range of business and functional roles.
Join us on 5 October in Cairo. Attendance is by invitation only, and we’ve reached full capacity.
Request your invitation here to join the waitlist.
Double duty
Saudi Arabia is loading crude at Yanbu again after the East-West pipeline came back to service — though volumes are still well short of where they were before the attack. Loadings at the Red Sea port have reached nearly 2 mn bbl / d since last week, and Aramco sent customers its October loading schedule on Monday, Reuters reports, citing trade sources and shipping data. Pipeline flows stand at 2.6 mn bbl / d and should rise to 3-4 mn bbl / d in the coming days, Kpler estimates. Returning to the roughly 5.5 mn bbl / d moved before the attack could take another month.
That leaves Aramco running both routes at once, with Hormuz traffic already well off its lows. Crude transits through Hormuz, including ship-to-ship activity in the Gulf of Oman, averaged c. 9 mn bbl / d over the seven days to 22 September, up from 2.2 mn bbl / d in late July, according to Kpler. With Yanbu coming back, the Kingdom has room to split exports between the Red Sea and Hormuz.
Aramco is also trying to make the Oman leg cheaper for buyers. The company is considering price cuts of about USD 9 per barrel for crude loaded off Oman, Reuters reports, citing sources familiar with the matter. The cuts could apply to cargoes offered this week for loading in the second half of October. Recent Aramco sales off Oman went for premiums of USD 10-20 per barrel.
The price reductions could be an attempt by the oil giant to rebuild market share lost after Hormuz disruptions. The Kingdom previously adjusted its pricing terms before the East-West pipeline damage to allow Asian buyers to cope with such costs, giving them the option to price crude against the official selling price for the month of arrival rather than loading.
The missing leg
Agility is wagering on trains that drive themselves. Agility’s corporate venture arm has signed on with US-based Parallel Systems to develop, finance, and deploy the company’s battery-electric autonomous freight platform across the GCC and EMEA, according to a press release.
The vehicles will run on existing track, sort themselves into platoons, and haul intermodal containers up to 500 miles (c. 805 km) on a charge. The partners will start by scouting corridors including port shuttles, links to inland logistics hubs, and city-to-city routes, with no money or timeline attached yet.
The GCC use case is pretty clear: Rail still struggles to cover the short inland legs between ports and logistics centers that trucks dominate today. Even at the peak of the Hormuz disruption, with cargo rerouted through eastern UAE, Oman, and the Red Sea, the inland leg defaulted to trucks because cross-border rail links and port-rail connections remain patchy.
The Egyptian government locked in enough LNG and crude to carry the country through peak demand this summer, and the real question now is who pays for it and for the rebuild ahead.
PowerTrip, our new four-part signature series, follows the money behind an energy sector that went from exporting gas to importing it in just five years.
Over the four issues this autumn, we’ll look at how the lights stayed on and what that cost, who will own the next generation of power, how fast renewables can really scale, and whether Egypt’s claim to be the region’s energy hub still holds.
Issue I looks at how Egypt avoided rationing this summer, how the country went from gas exporter to importer in a decade, and what keeping the lights on actually cost us.
Tap here to subscribe to the Egypt edition, coming straight to your inbox today.
Market watch
Oil prices rose this morning as Trump denied easing Iran sanctions while Qatar pushed for peace talks, Reuters reports. Brent crude futures increased USD 0.71 to USD 103.30 / bbl by 04.08 GMT, while West Texas Intermediate (WTI) gained USD 0.43 to USD 89.81 / bbl.
The Baltic Index eases: The Baltic Exchange’s dry bulk index — which tracks rates for the capesize, panamax, and supramax vessel segments — fell 2.8% to 3,178 points on Tuesday. The capesize index declined 4.6% to 5,103 points, while the panamax dipped 0.5% to 2,390 points. The smaller supramax inched up 0.4% to 1,797 points.
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