A massive flotilla of tankers is rushing to Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast to pick up crude oil that has been diverted as a result of Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Between 24 and 30 large crude carriers are en route to the Saudi Arabian port city of Yanbu, where the East-West pipeline terminates, according to ship tracking data reported by Bloomberg and The Financial Times on Thursday.
With Iran having effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, the 1,200km East-West pipeline is now the juggernaut for Gulf oil exports. The pipeline runs from the Abqaiq oil field on the kingdom’s eastern Gulf coast to the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea.
Saudi Aramco chief executive officer Amin Nasser said on Tuesday that the kingdom was ramping up crude flows through the pipeline.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) said in a report published on Thursday that exports through the kingdom’s western ports had already hit 5.9 million barrels per day (bpd) on 9 March. That was a jump from just 1.7 million bpd in 2025.
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Iran has shown that it is serious about closing the Strait of Hormuz, despite US President Donald Trump’s urging for vessels to go through the waterway, saying Iran’s navy had been “destroyed”.
At least six vessels were attacked in the Gulf this week. Two fuel tankers in Iraqi waters were set ablaze on Wednesday, and four bulk carriers were also hit.
“This is exactly what it was designed to do – bypass the strategic chokepoint of Hormuz if Iran shut it down and make Saudi Arabia the producer of last resort,” Jim Krane, a fellow and energy expert at Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston, Texas, previously told Middle East Eye.
‘This makes the Houthis important’
The Red Sea route does not remove geopolitical risk. About 75 percent of Saudi Arabia’s crude is exported to Asian countries like China, India, Japan, and South Korea. That means vessels have to pass twice through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait – once to pick up Saudi crude, and again to bring it to Asian markets.
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“This makes the Houthis important,” Greg Priddy, a senior fellow for the Middle East at the Center for the National Interest, told MEE.
The Houthis turned the Red Sea into a relative no-go zone for vessels after Israel’s war on Gaza broke out on 7 October 2023, following the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel. The Trump administration entered office vowing to bring the Houthis to heel with air strikes, but was unable to do that and instead cut a truce.
The Houthis have so far sat out the war on Iran, but if they resume attacking vessels, Iran would effectively have Saudi exports in a vice grip.
In sum, around 18 million bpd of oil and four million bpd of refined products cross the Strait of Hormuz. Another pipeline constructed by the UAE can also bypass Hormuz through the port of Fujairah. The IEA said the port loaded an average of 2.4 million bpd between 4 March and 9 March.
Even with both pipelines operating at full capacity, this leaves a gap of around 12 million bpd, with countries like Bahrain, Kuwait and Iraq blocked from exporting via the Strait of Hormuz.
