Agility sells its entire 65% Tristar stake to Aegis Logistics

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WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TODAY

TODAY: Agility to sell Tristar at a USD 1.5 bn valuation + Kuwait is in talks to join Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea pipeline

Good morning, ladies and gents. Half of today’s issue is about getting oil out of the Gulf. The other half is about getting paid for having done it for years.

Agility is selling its 65.12% stake in Tristar to India’s Aegis Logistics for up to USD 581 mn, in an agreement that values the Dubai-based fuel logistics player at USD 1.5 bn including debt. Agility bought the business for about USD 7 mn 23 years ago. It expects the investment to return more than USD 1 bn over that period, an internal rate of return of 16%.

Kuwait, meanwhile, is looking at new ways to move its crude. It is in talks to join a Saudi pipeline to the Red Sea and is studying a second route through the UAE to Fujairah. Its output has fallen to 2 mn bbl/d from 2.6 mn bbl/d since the crisis began.

China features in a few of today’s stories. Aramco’s new refinery in Liaoning has taken its first cargo of Saudi crude. Chinese banks are among the arrangers of DAE’s USD 2.1 bn loan, the second big Gulf financing with Chinese lenders this month. And a Chinese firm has signed an MoU to develop a dirty bulk terminal in Alexandria.

PLUS-The Houthis have told shipping companies, workers, and civilians to clear Saudi airports and oil facilities, saying they will keep striking both in the coming days. The group claimed responsibility for recent attacks on Aramco’s Ras Tanura refinery and Dhahran facilities and King Khalid International Airport.

Loan ranger

DAE taps Asian banks for USD 2.1 bn: Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE) is seeking a seven-year, USD 2.1 bn loan, mostly from Asian banks, to fund working capital, Bloomberg reports. Emirates NBD, Bank of China, OCBC, and China Construction Bank Asia are arranging the facility. The greenback tranche could price at 110 basis points over SOFR, and the dirham tranche at 95 basis points over the Emirates Interbank Offered Rate (EIBOR).

The loan follows a big jump in DAE’s fleet: Less than three months ago, DAE closed its USD 9 bn acquisition of Macquarie AirFinance. The agreement made it the world’s third-largest aircraft lessor and added commitments for nearly 150 aircraft, with deliveries running into the 2030s. The new money adds to the USD 4.4 bn in available liquidity DAE had at the end of June, according to its 1H results.

It’s the second big Gulf financing with Chinese lenders on board this month, after QatarEnergy’s USD 3 bn agreement with four Chinese lenders earlier this month. Chinese lenders appeal to Gulf companies because they offer large commitments, competitive borrowing costs, and longer repayment periods, even amid regional disruptions, Natixis’ Alicia Garcia Herrero tells EnterpriseAM.

Elevated ambitions

Adnoc L&S is in talks to buy a stake in Abu Dhabi offshore services firm HEA Energy at a valuation of up to USD 3 bn, The Wall Street Journal reports, citing people it says are familiar with the matter. The stake could be a minority or a controlling one, and the talks could still fall through, the sources said.

HEA would add a different kind of asset. Founded in 2022, it operates self-elevating barges for offshore wind and oil and gas maintenance. Its revenue more than doubled this year to about USD 100 mn, according to the Journal.

It would extend a buying pattern. Adnoc L&S’ acquisition of Zakher Marine in 2022 added 24 jack-up barges and 38 offshore support vessels on undisclosed terms. In January 2025, it completed a USD 1.04 bn acquisition of an 80% stake in Navig8, adding 32 tankers and expanding its international footprint.

The talks follow a blowout half for Adnoc L&S’ shipping business. The company’s net income rose 179% to USD 1.2 bn in 1H on higher charter rates and chartering activity as Adnoc moved crude through Hormuz.

A stake in HEA could take Adnoc L&S into the North Sea and the US, adding to a business that supports offshore drilling and operates more than 100 ships transporting crude, LNG, and refined products. The company’s order commitments this year reached roughly USD 2.7 bn by late August for vessel acquisitions and newbuild orders, including VLCCs, VLGCs, and LNG carriers.

Market watch

Oil prices fell this morning as investors weighed Hormuz supply risks against eased US shipping sanctions, Reuters reports. Brent crude futures dipped USD 1.64 to USD 104.42 / bbl by 03.37 GMT, while West Texas Intermediate (WTI) slipped USD 0.98 to USD 94.11 / bbl.

The Baltic Index extends its decline:The Baltic Exchange’s dry bulk index — which tracks rates for the capesize, panamax, and supramax vessel segments — was down 4.8% to 2,667 points on Wednesday. The capesize index eased 9.1% to 3,630 points, while the panamax eased nearly 1% to 2,409 points. The smaller supramax rose 0.7% to 1,845 points.

Data point

25.3 mn tons — that’s how much freight Syria moved in the first nine months of 2026, and only 2.5 mn tons of it crossed a border. The remaining 22.8 mn tons stayed domestic. Cross-border runs also made up just 83.5k of the 1.26 mn loaded freight vehicles the Transport Ministry logged between January and September, state news agency Sana reports. July was the busiest month for domestic freight, at 3.55 mn tons.

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ADX-listed Agility sells its stake in Dubai’s Tristar to India’s Aegis

Agility Global is selling its entire 65.12% stake in Dubai-based energy logistics player Tristar to India’s Aegis Logistics — 23 years after buying it for about USD 7 mn. The transaction values Tristar at USD 1.5 bn including debt and puts its equity value at USD 882 mn. Abu Dhabi-listed Agility will get up to USD 581 mn for its full 65.12% stake, according to disclosure (pdf).

The money comes in three installments — Agility gets USD 425 mn at closing and USD 110 mn a year later, plus USD 46 mn more if agreed conditions are met. Aegis is also buying smaller stakes from Gulf Investment Corporation and Diamond Holdings, which takes its total to 89.8% of Tristar for USD 809 mn.

Why it matters: The agreement gives Aegis, which runs LPG and bulk liquid terminals in India, an international fuel network based in the Gulf. Tristar stores and moves petroleum, chemicals, aviation fuel, and LNG in more than 30 countries. It runs more than 1k trucks, 26 ocean-going and coastal vessels, and 14 tank farms, and it owns a majority stake in Aquarius Energy, a fuel storage JV with Glencore.

Agility expects more than USD 1 bn from a 23-year hold: Tristar was earning USD 13.5 mn in revenue when Agility bought it. Agility invested another USD 123 mn over the first seven years, including in strategic fuel storage. Last year, Tristar booked USD 1.4 bn in revenue and held USD 1.7 bn in assets. At the end of 1H 2026, it made up 27% of Agility’s revenue and 13% of its assets.

Agility expects the sale to cap a return of more than USD 1 bn on its fuel logistics investment, an internal rate of return of 16% over the holding period.

Some interests are excluded: Agility is retaining directly held interests in a strategic fuel storage asset consolidated within Tristar’s financial statements. It estimates their equity value at some USD 145 mn and plans a separate sale process, while expecting its broader fuel logistics investment to generate a return exceeding USD 1 bn and an internal rate of return of 16% over the 23-year holding period.

The exit has been in the making: Agility confirmed in August this year that it was discussing a potential Tristar sale with interested parties, according to a disclosure (pdf). The agreement with Aegis marks what Agility describes as its second major strategic exit, following the 2021 sale of its Global Integrated Logistics business to DSV.

REMEMBER- Tristar scrapped its planned Dubai IPO in April 2021, having offered up to 24% of its shares at an implied valuation of USD 719-882 mn. The company said shareholder’s expectations had not been met, while sources told Reuters investor demand was weak.

What’s next: The agreement is expected to close in March, and Agility will run a separate sale process for the fuel storage interests it is keeping.

East-West pipeline could become shared Gulf export infrastructure as Kuwait eyes joining

Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline is on its way to becoming shared Gulf export infrastructure. Kuwait is in talks to join a proposed Saudi line running to the Red Sea so that it could serve both countries, Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) Deputy CEO for Planning and Innovation Mohammed Al Abduljaleel tells EnterpriseAM. “Currently, there is coordination with the Kingdom to find or build a new oil pipeline from east to west, to the Red Sea,” he says.

The line Kuwait wants to join kept Aramco exporting through the crisis: Saudi Arabia was pumping 5.8 mn bbl/d through the 1.2k km pipeline to Yanbu this month, against capacity of 7 mn bbl/d, and plans to lift overland capacity to 10 mn bbl/d within two to three years. Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman said Monday the pipeline has already returned more than it cost to build. Shipments from other Gulf producers, Kuwait among them, stopped over the same period.

Kuwait has lost nearly a quarter of its crude output since the crisis began. Production is running at 2 mn bbl/d, down from 2.6 mn bbl/d, Al Abduljaleel told us. What remains is split between domestic refineries and exports.

The UAE offers a second way out: Kuwait is also studying access to a pipeline route through the UAE to Fujairah, which sits outside the strait as well.

Neither route has reached the feasibility stage, so costs and capacity are still open. Al Abduljaleel says Kuwait would pursue both as long-term investments whether or not regional tensions ease. Under normal conditions, most of its crude would keep moving through existing Gulf ports.

The routes sit inside a bigger spending plan: Kuwait plans to invest KWD 20-22 bn (USD 65-72 bn) over five years to expand oil production capacity and develop infrastructure, Al Abduljaleel says. Financing options include bond sales, local bank loans, export credit agency funding, and agreements on existing assets. He pointed to Project Shaheen, under which KOC would lease its existing pipelines to investors, including Blackstone and Brookfield, and lease them back. That money would fund domestic production and infrastructure. The Saudi and UAE routes would be financed separately.

Kuwait also wants its oil stored closer to its customers: It is weighing new storage in Asia after earlier arrangements near Japan and South Korea proved limited in scale. “Given the situation we went through, having oil and petroleum-product storage facilities near markets is one of the necessary solutions,” he says. No budget or timeline has been set.

The 2030 target holds: Kuwait’s plan to reach 4 mn bbl / d of capacity by 2030 could slip, though the goal itself is unchanged. “The strategic goal has not been affected. The plans remain as they are,” he says.

Where the market sits: Russell Hardy, CEO of Vitol, one of the world’s largest independent oil traders, warned that crude could hit USD 200 / bbl if Middle East supply disruptions worsen, according to Reuters, even as some 14 mn bbl / d of crude and refined products continue to leave the region, helping contain prices. “We are still far from that figure. But the continuation of this crisis and delays in finding solutions are putting pressure on markets,” Al Abduljaleel says.

Riyadh pitches itself as the region’s safe pair of hands on oil

Supply security was also the main topic at the World Petroleum Council’s energy congress in Riyadh this week, the first time the Kingdom has hosted the event, WPC Energy Executive Committee Member Ivan Marten tells EnterpriseAM. “Now we are all in the news and we are understanding why this is important and why energy security is important, and we should care about this,” he says.

The CEOs of ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies, Shell, and BP sat this one out. Marten put it down to a mix of personal circumstances, security concerns, and company travel policies. Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport has been targeted three times in a week, and the UK is advising against all but essential travel to Riyadh and other parts of Saudi Arabia. The Energy Ministry helped international delegations with transport and logistics, he says.

Hormuz attacks hit a wartime peak just as oil flows were recovering

Attacks on ships near Hormuz are running at their fastest pace of the war, and the bill is landing on the tanker market. Gulf crude is still getting out through bypass routes and ship-to-ship transfers, but each barrel now takes more ships and more money to move. Average global supertanker earnings hit a record USD 805k a day last week.

Sunday was the worst day yet, with six vessels hit, according to the Financial Times’s count of UK Maritime Trade Operations reports. Three were refined product tankers, two were crude tankers owned by China’s New Treasure Shipping and South Korea’s Sinokor, and one was an Indian container ship, maritime security firm Vanguard says.

That puts the attack rate at nearly double the war’s previous peak. Some 24 ships were hit in the two weeks to earlier this week October, compared with 13 in the first two weeks of March, the next most intense stretch, the FT reports, citing UKMTO reports and European security sources.

October wiped out September’s recovery

Gulf oil outflows averaged 15.5 mn bbl / d in September, their highest since the war began. Only 2.9 mn barrels moved through the strait earlier this week, the lowest daily figure this month, , according to Kpler data published on Tuesday. The seven-day average is running about 43% below pre-conflict levels, though Kpler says it may revise Sunday’s number upward as satellites pick up more vessels.

Ship traffic tells the same story, at about a fifth of normal: Vessels made c. 29 transits a day in the 72 hours to Sunday, against a historical average of c. 138, according to US naval data relayed by the Joint Maritime Information Center.

Some owners who sent ships through the strait for the high rates are now taking them elsewhere. At least 10 VLCCs and several Suezmax tankers have halted or reversed course near Fujairah in recent days. Some have sailed for US Gulf ports, where a global tanker shortage keeps rates high at a fraction of the risk, the FT adds.

The bypass routers are holding, but they’re slow

Ports outside the strait picked up the slack through early October: Loadings from the Gulf of Oman coast and the Red Sea more than doubled to 6.7 mn bbl / d in the week to 6 October, keeping total Middle East crude exports at pre-war levels, Reuters reported citing Kpler data. Those figures predate the Sunday attacks.

The workarounds take time: A ship-to-ship transfer off Oman now takes nearly 10 days, up from five to seven, as vessels wait for tugboats and transfer crews, and two VLCCs have moved Gulf crude onto other supertankers as far away as India’s Gulf of Kutch.

Those delays are also pulling Japanese tankers back toward the region. Japanese refiners had relied on ship-to-ship transfers far from the war, off India and in Southeast Asia such as off Malaysia, which kept their ships safe but left them dependent on sellers. As freight costs climb, their own supertankers are loading near the Gulf of Oman again. Idemitsu Maru landed in Japan this month with Omani crude, Idemitsu’s Apollo Energy has left Fujairah with Murban, and at least two more Japanese VLCCs are due at Fujairah in the coming days, Bloomberg reports, citing Kpler data and shipbrokers.

It’s a cautious return from a country that gets nearly all its crude from the Middle East. The region supplied 93% of Japan’s c. 823 mn barrels of crude imports in 2025, according to Kpler. None of the returning ships has entered the Gulf, and Idemitsu says its position on Hormuz transits is unchanged. It’s “a selective return rather than a wholesale shift into higher-risk waters,” Hidenori Watanave of the University of Tokyo told Bloomberg.

Egypt is catching only a slice of the diversion: Sumed can move 2.5 mn bbl / d, about half of the East-West pipeline’s roughly 5 mn bbl / d, and about 80% of Saudi Red Sea crude exports have passed Bab El Mandab since March.

A supertanker voyage now costs more than a rocket launch

Slow tanker transfers and longer routes mean the market needs more tankers to move the same oil: Between the detours, rising cargo volumes, and long-haul Red Sea flows, crude tanker demand is up more than 13%, Clarksons estimates.

On one US route, freight now costs almost half as much as the oil itself. One US booking was accepted at about USD 41 / bbl, roughly 45% of WTI’s price near USD 91, against an average of USD 4.50 last year. A US-to-China supertanker voyage costs about USD 80 mn, more than the USD 74 mn price of a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch.

OUR TAKE- The Hormuz squeeze is now about tanker capacity more than crude supply. The bypass routes are doing their job, but every extra day at anchor off Oman takes another ship out of service, and the market is paying for it at record rates.

Alexandria gets a Chinese port partner + Aramco fuels its next refinery

Building for the overflow

Alexandria is getting a dirty bulk terminal, and a Chinese company is building it. The Alexandria Port Authority signed an MoU with Xiamen C&D to develop the terminal at Al-Max Port, according to a Transport Ministry statement issued yesterday. Dirty bulk is the unprocessed cargo that can’t share a berth with grain: coal, clinker, and iron ore — the raw material feeding cement and steel. The design gives it storage yards, silos, two main quays, and handling facilities, with room for three of the largest bulk carriers at the same time once it’s built. It’s the first of four terminals planned for Al-Max Port, all part of the Greater Alexandria Port scheme inside the Sokhna-Alexandria logistics corridor.

The timing isn’t accidental, since transit containers through Alexandria and Dekheila ports rose 74% last fiscal year as carriers shifted to the Mediterranean to stay clear of the Red Sea, and the ports are feeling the squeeze. The Al-Max terminal and the Amreya dry port, which opens shortly, both belong to a wider plan for 33 dry ports and logistics zones along seven corridors. C&D wants more where this came from: managing director and CEO Liu Rongdian says the company is looking at further terminals and at commercial shipbuilding.

Aramco fuels its Chinese mega-refinery

Aramco’s China mega-refinery takes its first Saudi crude: Saudi Aramco and its Chinese partners have received the first Arabian crude shipment at their Hapco refining and petrochemical complex in Liaoning province, and commercial operations could begin in 1Q 2027, Bloomberg reports. The cargo arrived aboard the Kassab after loading at Saudi Juaymah port. The complex pairs a 300k bbl/d refinery with a capacity of around 1.6 mn tons of ethylene and 2 mn tons of paraxylene annually.

Aramco will supply most of the crude the refinery runs: The firm holds a 30% stake in Hapco alongside North Huajin (51%) and Panjin Xincheng (19%), and has the right to supply up to 210k bbl / d of crude to the complex.

Why this matters: The new capacity could help ease regional shortages of key inputs used in plastics, packaging, and polyester production, after the war disrupted Gulf petrochemical and naphtha exports. Before the conflict, naphtha shipments through Hormuz met 60-70% of Asia’s import requirements, according to S&P Global. Hapco’s paraxylene output could be particularly useful for China, which imported 9.6 mn tons of chemicals last year despite expanding domestic production.

Calendar

20-22 October (Tuesday-Thursday): TOC Americas, Cartagena, Colombia.

21-22 October (Wednesday-Thursday): Global Ports Forum, Singapore.

26-29 (Monday-Thursday): Air Cargo Forum, Miami, US.

27-29 October (Tuesday-Thursday): Routes World, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

NOVEMBER

2-5 November (Monday-Thursday): ADIPEC Maritime and Logistics Exhibition and Conference, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

10-11 November (Tuesday-Wednesday): TOC Asia, Singapore.

10-12 November (Tuesday-Thursday): Intermodal Europe, Rotterdam, Netherlands.

11-13 November (Wednesday-Friday): Logitrans, Istanbul, Turkey.

18-19 November (Wednesday-Thursday): Breakbulk Asia, Singapore.

FEBRUARY 2027

10-12 February (Wednesday-Friday): Routes Americas, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

MARCH 2027

16-18 March (Tuesday-Thursday): CMA Shipping, Houston, US.

16-18 March (Tuesday-Thursday): Routes Asia, New Delhi, India.

APRIL 2027

20-22 April (Tuesday-Thursday): Routes Europe, Antalya, Turkey.

26-29 April (Monday-Thursday): Transport Logistic and air cargo Europe, Munich, Germany.

26-29 April (Monday-Thursday): Saudi Smart Logistics, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

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