Rizky Amelia
Faced with escalating maritime blockades and severe infrastructure damage, Saudi Arabia has significantly increased its reliance on ship-to-ship crude oil transfers off the coast of Oman. The move comes as commercial shipping operators increasingly refuse to navigate traditional maritime corridors following months of regional military conflict, prompting regional producers to adopt unconventional logistics to maintain global energy deliveries.
The kingdom's standard export routes have suffered compounded disruptions. A crucial alternative route, the 1,200-kilometer (746-mile) East-West pipeline that connects Saudi Arabia's primary eastern oil fields to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, was incapacitated following drone strikes carried out by Iran-aligned Houthi forces. With Houthi fighters simultaneously asserting control over the southern Bab al-Mandeb strait, Riyadh's primary western maritime exit has been effectively eliminated.
Compounding the crisis, the vital Strait of Hormuz remains virtually shuttered. Iranian authorities closed the strategic waterway—which historically accommodated nearly a fifth of all pre-war global energy traffic—in direct response to the broader United States-Israel war with Iran. Tehran has since leveraged its control over the narrow chokepoint as a powerful bargaining chip in ongoing diplomatic and strategic negotiations.
To bypass these operational bottlenecks, Saudi Arabia and its regional allies have increasingly turned to the type of shadow maritime tactics long utilized by Iran. Saudi tankers are moving crude directly to offshore transfer zones located just outside the Strait of Hormuz, where the oil is transferred onto separate vessels destined for global markets.
Oman’s deepwater industrial port of Sohar has emerged as a focal point for these logistical maneuvers. Positioned conveniently outside the narrow bottleneck of the Persian Gulf, Sohar offers deep berths and substantial cargo-handling capacity. Its geographic location provides international shipping lines with direct overland access to broader Arabian Peninsula markets while avoiding the perilous navigation through contested waters.
A second crucial hub is the United Arab Emirates’ Port of Fujairah, located on the country's eastern coastline. As one of the world’s foremost bunkering and crude storage centers, Fujairah’s expansive open-ocean anchorage provides essential staging grounds for conducting offshore ship-to-ship transfers outside the immediate perimeter of the strait.
These offshore operations are carried out under acute security pressures. The newly established Persian Gulf Strait Authority, an Iranian body created to regulate and police the waterway, operates in close proximity to these designated transfer zones. Iranian forces have repeatedly launched attacks against commercial vessels utilizing unauthorized shipping channels, particularly the southern passages running adjacent to Omani territorial waters.
In an effort to keep Middle Eastern energy supplies flowing to world markets, the United States military has reportedly stepped in. Beginning in early May, American armed forces have been providing support and facilitation for dozens of these covert transfer operations across the Gulf of Oman.
The physical mechanics of ship-to-ship transfers require extensive technical precision. During an operation, one vessel—typically the larger tanker—maintains a stationary anchor or a steady, slow course. A maneuvering partner vessel approaches alongside at minimal speed until the hulls are aligned parallel to one another. Heavy pneumatic rubber fenders are positioned between the hulls to absorb mechanical shock and prevent structural damage.
To avoid monitoring and military targeting, crews routinely disable their automatic identification system (AIS) tracking devices. Once the ships are safely moored side-by-side and mandatory safety evaluations are completed, high-capacity pumps move crude or liquefied natural gas through heavy-duty flexible hoses, with operators continuously tracking line pressure, sea states, and changing weather conditions.
Industry analysts emphasize that while these complex procedures are sustaining trade flows, they remain suboptimal. Rishi Rajanala, an energy specialist in Oil Americas at LSEG Data & Analytics, noted that following the shutdown of the East-West pipeline, Saudi Arabia's primary alternative became shipping crude from Persian Gulf terminals to external transfer hubs like Sohar. However, Rajanala observed that overall transfer volumes are heavily constrained by tanker availability, soaring insurance premiums, and high freight costs, keeping total exports well below pre-conflict benchmarks.
Nonetheless, export data indicates that offshore volumes have begun to recover. Rahul Choudhary, vice president of upstream research at Rystad Energy, pointed out that crude flows utilizing the Hormuz route rose past two million barrels per day during the first two weeks of the month, representing an increase of roughly one million barrels per day compared to August levels.
Choudhary indicated that this upward trend is expected to continue as state-owned Saudi Aramco actively offers additional crude loadings to Asian refiners directly out of Sohar. He noted that Riyadh is likely to lean even more heavily on dark tanker activity in the coming weeks to bridge the supply deficit created by the loss of access to its Yanbu terminal on the Red Sea.
The reliance on clandestine offshore transfers is not limited to Saudi Arabia. Independent maritime tracking groups and regional reporting have confirmed that neighboring producers, including Kuwait and Qatar, have engaged in comparable ship-to-ship maneuvers to shepherd their petroleum exports past the blocked waterway.
Despite their utility as an emergency workaround, maritime experts caution that unregulated ship-to-ship transfers carry substantial environmental and operational hazards. Conducting clandestine cargo shifts far out at sea frequently involves older, substandard vessels suffering from deferred hull maintenance, uninspected transfer hoses, and a lack of standard insurance protections—all heightened by operating without active transponders.
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