Exports of crude from the Saudi port of Yanbu are surging as the kingdom uses pipeline volumes to avoid Houthi attacks on tankers.

Kpler, a trade flow data firm, said that oil giant Saudi Aramco has lifted exports from the Red Sea port to 863,000 barrels per day so far this year.

Maersk-chartered Costamare ship sails towards Dubai with no sign of claimed Houthi attack
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That compares to just 572,000 barrels per day a year earlier.

Kpler data shows that 1.02m barrels per day of exports for October, the highest since April.

The state-controlled oil giant is using the East-West Pipeline for the shipments, “allowing Saudi Arabia to avoid the Bab el Mandeb Strait and reduce exposure to risks such as Houthi drone attacks”, Kpler said.

Tracking data from VesselsValue shows that eight tankers have called at the Yanbu Oil Terminal in October. All the vessels were operated by Saudi shipowners — either Bihar International or Bahri.

Half of the vessels are VLCCs, while the other half were aframax crude tankers or LR2s, which are product tankers of the same size.

Yanbu is also the site of a major refinery.

Also known as Petroline, the 1,200-km pipeline was initially set up during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s to get around another checkpoint: the Strait of Hormuz.

It was later converted into a natural gas pipeline before Saudi Arabia repurposed it again to move crude to provide flexibility in case Middle East tensions cut off the Gulf.

Yanbu is not entirely beyond the reach of the Iranian-backed Houthis. The Yemen-based militant group attacked the pipeline in 2019, taking it out of service temporarily.

With throughput capacity of 5m barrels per day, the pipeline still has ample capacity to serve as an outlet for Saudi oil should the Strait of Hormuz become cut off.

The United Arab Emirates’ Habshan-Fujairah oil pipeline, also built as a Hormuz alternative, has also seen its shipments increase.

Kpler said it has already moved 1.07m barrels per day this year, up from 813,000 barrels per day in all of last year.

It has a total capacity of 1.5m barrels per day.

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