Gulf Oil Recovered by Skipping the Strait of Hormuz

Middle East oil flow hit 92 percent of its pre-war baseline in the last week of September, according to Kpler. That rebound came seven months after the US-Israel war with Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz as a normal shipping lane.

About 40 percent of the oil exported from the region in September left on overland pipelines to the Red Sea or the Gulf of Oman, up from 17 percent before the war. The barrels are back. The map that moves them is not.

Gulf Crude Came Back on a Different Map

Kpler, the maritime intelligence firm that has become the market’s default tape for this war, put the point in one line on September 30. Gulf crude exports excluding Iran reached at least 16.5 million barrels a day in September, back to pre-war levels for that slice of the market, it said, and they did so through a rebuilt logistics system rather than an open strait.

Gulf crude exports recover

Seven months after the Strait of Hormuz closed, Middle East Gulf crude exports excluding Iran have returned to pre-war levels, reaching at least 16.5 mbd in September. The recovery has reshaped regional #oil logistics. Around 40% of crude now leaves… pic.twitter.com/FbsqS6oYXT

— Kpler (@Kpler) September 30, 2026

Of the crude that still crossed Hormuz in August, more than 70 percent changed tankers offshore in the Gulf of Oman. More than 60 large oil tankers now run a shuttle back and forth under US air cover. Pipelines that used to sit as a slide in a resilience briefing are carrying a share of exports that has more than doubled.

Alex Booth, Kpler’s head of research, wrote in the firm’s October 1 tracker that Saudi Arabia was exporting at full stretch from both coasts three weeks after an attack on the East-West Pipeline, with Saudi loadings of 8.8 million barrels a day in the week to September 27, the highest weekly level since April 2020. Naveen Das, a senior oil analyst at Kpler, said this heavier use of pipelines is likely to stick, because it seems very improbable that Gulf countries and Iran go back to being relatively harmonious.

THE WAR CALENDAR

1. February 28, 2026: The US-Israel war with Iran begins and the Strait of Hormuz ceases to function as an ordinary oil lane.
2. Mid-June 2026: US forces begin supporting commercial ships in the strait, mainly with air cover, warnings and intercepts.
3. July 14, 2026: Washington reinstates a naval blockade on Iranian ports; Iranian crude loadings into the open market fall toward zero.
4. September 2026: Gulf exporters push pipelines and shuttles hard enough that late-month regional oil flow reaches 92 percent of the pre-war baseline, while Iranian attacks on commercial shipping hit their highest successful monthly total since March.

The argument on trading desks is not whether more oil is leaving the Gulf. It is which number you treat as normal. Hormuz-only still looks short. Regional crude with Iran stripped out looks whole. Both can be true at once, and that split is the system the war built.

How Much Oil Now Skips the Strait?

Before the fighting, the US Energy Information Administration put 20.9 million barrels a day through Hormuz in the first half of 2025, about 20 percent of global petroleum liquids use and a quarter of seaborne oil trade, with 89 percent of that crude headed for Asia. Kpler’s wartime tape uses a different cut. In the week to September 30, an average of 12 million barrels a day passed through the strait against a pre-war baseline of 17 million.

The missing strait barrels did not all vanish. A large share of them walked around the waterway. Just under 20 percent of crude is now leaving from ports on the Red Sea at the end of Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline, which Kpler has recording exports of more than 4 million barrels a day. Almost a quarter of all crude flowing from the region is being piped past Hormuz to terminals along the Gulf of Oman, above all Fujairah in the UAE. Add those bypass volumes to the shuttles still threading the strait, and the regional total can look close to repaired even while Hormuz itself is not.

WHERE THE BARRELS LEFT IN LATE SEPTEMBER

EIA had put the two main bypass lines, Saudi Arabia’s East-West system and the UAE’s Abu Dhabi line to Fujairah, at about 4.7 million barrels a day of combined capacity in its last chokepoint review. Kpler’s wartime Red Sea print alone is already above 4 million. The planning figure from peacetime is the one the Gulf has been running past.

The East-West Line and the Fujairah Door

Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline, the Petroline, runs from the processing hub at Abqaiq across the peninsula to Yanbu on the Red Sea. It is the kingdom’s only practical crude door that does not need Hormuz, and for most of this war it has been treated as a main line rather than a spare. Iran-backed proxies in Iraq were blamed for a drone strike on the route in September. Three weeks later Kpler had the system at full stretch, with Red Sea loadings above 4 million barrels a day.

Yanbu Takes the Red Sea Route

Yanbu puts Saudi barrels into the Red Sea, which then has to clear Bab el-Mandeb if the cargo is sailing toward Asia the long way. That is a second chokepoint, not a clean escape. It is still the reason Riyadh could keep selling while the strait was a shooting gallery. Booth’s tracker had the kingdom loading from both coasts at once in the last week of September, Gulf terminals and Red Sea terminals working together rather than as substitutes.

Fujairah Loads Beyond the Strait

The UAE’s door is shorter. The Habshan-Fujairah line lifts Abu Dhabi crude overland to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, where tankers can load already outside Hormuz and turn into the Arabian Sea. Kpler’s data shows almost a quarter of all crude leaving the region now taking that Gulf of Oman path. Das’s “new normal” line is really a bet on this geography: once a producer has paid to send the majority of its barrels around the strait, it does not put them back into Iranian missile range for the sake of an old routing habit.

Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar do not have an equivalent door. Their crude, condensate and gas still have to use the waterway, which is why a regional total that looks healthy can still leave some Gulf exporters more exposed than the headline implies.

Shuttle Tankers Cross at Night Under US Cover

Most of the oil that still uses Hormuz no longer makes a single long voyage from a Gulf loading port to Asia. It rides a shuttle. Kpler counts more than 60 large oil tankers moving back and forth across the strait, then handing the cargo to other vessels in the Gulf of Oman. In the week to September 30, ship-to-ship transfers there averaged more than 4 million barrels a day. Satellite imagery from September 24 showed six pairs of ships docked or paired off the Omani port of Sohar, a transfer zone that sits farther from Iranian launch points than a Ras Tanura unberthing.

US military help has been in place since at least mid-June. Martin Kelly, senior intelligence analyst at the security firm EOS Risk Group, said that support is primarily air cover for ships, including warnings and intercepts of drones, missiles or boats. US Navy figures cited with the Kpler work show the number of vessels assisted by US forces up by a third in September compared with August. US officials said American forces escorted 40 commercial vessels carrying 18 million barrels through the strait on a single day in early September, a wartime high for that operation.

Ships that take the US-recommended southern route near Oman, rather than asking Iran for the northern lane, keep getting hit. Shuttle runs now often move dark, AIS off, hugging the Omani coast on Navy waypoints, a wartime drill rather than a commercial transit. Kelly’s caution sits on the hulls themselves.

There is a question over how long these ships can last, particularly as attacks on them continue.

Martin Kelly, senior intelligence analyst, EOS Risk Group

Ana Subasic, a trade risk analyst at Kpler, put the same thought in market language: more ships and more oil than earlier in the war does not mean flows have gone back to normal.

September Hits Outran the March Peak

The recovery in volumes is being read in some capitals as proof the strait is settling. The incident tape says otherwise. ACLED, the conflict monitor, records September as the month with the highest successful Iranian attacks since March, when the fighting was at its earlier peak. Tankers were the main target, with more struck in September than in March.

THE SEPTEMBER INCIDENT TAPE

• Ships struck: ACLED records 18 commercial ships hit in September, including at least 16 tankers plus a bulk carrier and a passenger/cargo ship.
• Who was hit: At least 11 of those 18 ships had established ties to the UAE, Kuwait or Saudi Arabia.
• War to date: United Against Nuclear Iran has counted 89 maritime incidents involving commercial vessels across the Persian Gulf, the strait and the Gulf of Oman since the war began.
• Crews: The International Maritime Organization, cited in that same UANI round-up, puts seafarer deaths from those incidents at 24.

Valentin d’Hauthuille, ACLED’s Middle East regional team lead, said the recovery in oil flows should not be mistaken for an easing of the threat to commercial shipping. A short-lived US “tanker for tanker” retaliation policy in early September, under which American forces hit Iranian tankers after Iranian strikes on commercial hulls, lasted only a few days. On September 29, UANI recorded three Liberian-flagged tankers, Mersin Prosperity, Sinbad and Al Ruwais, struck by projectiles in the strait.

With Iranian attacks drawing less public US response as the American midterm elections approach, d’Hauthuille said further strikes over the following weeks remained likely, because the new shipping arrangements reduce one of Tehran’s better sources of leverage.

What Still Cannot Leave the Gulf

Crude is the stream that got a wartime workaround. Other Gulf energy did not. Fewer than a million barrels a day of processed oil products passed through Hormuz in the last week of September, down from 3.5 million a day before the war. Jet fuel, diesel and gasoline from Gulf export refineries still need product tankers whose owners and insurers have been slower to return than the crude shuttles under Navy cover. Matt Smith, Kpler’s director of commodity research, said production still needs to rise and refineries still need to ramp back up.

LNG is thinner still. The International Energy Agency’s 2026 Hormuz factsheet said about 93 percent of Qatar’s LNG and 96 percent of the UAE’s used to transit the strait, together almost 20 percent of global LNG. EIA put Hormuz LNG at 11.4 billion cubic feet a day in the first half of 2025, over a fifth of world LNG trade, most of it Qatari. Those cargoes have no pipeline equivalent. Kpler counted 21 LNG cargoes exiting the strait in September, up from 15 in June and the highest monthly total since the war began on February 28, and still a fraction of the pre-war pace.

STREAMS THE WORKAROUND DID NOT FIX

• Refined products: Fewer than a million barrels a day through Hormuz against 3.5 million before the war, which is why Gulf jet fuel and diesel never rode the crude rebound.
• Qatari and UAE LNG: Twenty-one cargoes in September, the best month of the war, against a peacetime flow that was about a fifth of world LNG trade.
• Iranian crude: Near zero after the July blockade, down from 1.7 million barrels a day before the war, with 53 laden tankers still sitting along Iran’s coast on UANI’s September 30 count.
• Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar crude: No overland door around Hormuz, so their barrels still need the same waterway the shuttles are being shot at in.

Iran is the other hole in the 92 percent. Exports have ground to a halt since the US blockade came back in July. UANI has not tracked any tanker laden with Iranian crude that successfully left the Gulf of Oman and avoided US enforcement since July 12. Kpler estimates the Iranian crude already sitting on vessels outside the blockade has fallen to around 15 million barrels from 29 million in early September, and that those stores could run out by mid-October. Off Sri Lanka, UANI and ship-tracking data show 20 empty Iran-flagged tankers that cannot sail home because of the blockade.

A Status Quo the Oil Market Does Not Trust

The physical market has been easing even as the incident count has not. Kpler’s October 1 note said Dubai’s near-term M1 to M3 backwardation had dropped from about $25 a barrel to about $15 as more Gulf supply showed up, while warning that Iranian threats to Gulf infrastructure still make a one-way bet on lower prices a risky one. Das said the oil market does not trust that this arrangement will hold, given the chance of further Iranian attacks and the possible effect of the US midterm elections.

It seems very improbable that we live in a world whereby the Gulf countries and Iran go back to being relatively harmonious.

Naveen Das, senior oil analyst, Kpler

That is the second consequence hiding under the 92 percent. Gulf producers have learned they can sell most of their crude without a free strait, as long as the US Navy stays, the shuttle hulls last, and the pipelines keep running after they are hit. They are already treating that lesson as durable. Product tankers, LNG crews and anyone still stuck with a Hormuz-only route are living on a different clock, and so is Iran’s idle fleet off Sri Lanka.