August 28, 2026. According to OilPrice.com, Saudi Arabia is not waiting for the Strait of Hormuz to return to normal to deliver its crude to Asia. It is building a workaround, one tanker handoff at a time.

Saudi Aramco is selling more September Arab Medium and Arab Heavy to Asia via ship-to-ship transfers off Fujairah (UAE) or Sohar (Oman), so buyers take cargo outside the Strait of Hormuz after
 
Aramco moves barrels through the high-risk leg—sometimes on tankers with tracking switched off.
 
Two VLCCs carrying a combined 4 million barrels of Saudi crude headed to Sinopec after STS off Sohar, with arrivals expected at Ningbo on September 15 and Zhanjiang on September 12.
 
Aramco has offered the STS arrangement for a second consecutive week, keeping China-bound volumes moving even though the Gulf export corridor is still compromised.
 
Loadings have resumed at Ras Tanura and Juaymah after a three-week pause, while more crude is routed west on the East-West pipeline to Egypt’s Sidi Kerir terminal for European customers who can avoid Hormuz.
 
The STS split-voyage model makes the Hormuz transit Aramco’s risk, restoring Saudi barrels to Chinese ports without requiring buyer vessels to enter the strait.

 
Read the full story on OilPrice.com.

TankTerminals.com is a market research platform with not only manager-level contact details but also logistical, operational, infrastructural and shipping data of more than +11,000 tank terminals and +6,420 production facilities worldwide.