Ulsan Port Sees Surge in Crude Imports from India and Egypt Amid Mideast Crisis
ULSAN — As geopolitical tensions in the Middle East drag on, the shipping routes carrying Middle Eastern crude to Ulsan Port have widened to include India‘s west coast and Egypt‘s Mediterranean shore. The origin of the oil has not changed. Rather, the shift reflects how the global shipping market has redrawn its routes to avoid the risk of strait closures and port congestion, and that redrawing is now showing up in Ulsan’s import figures.
Ulsan Port took in 5.512 million tons of crude oil in October, up 7.5% from 5.126 million tons in September, according to a report on October crude import trends released by the Ulsan Customs Office on the 9th. The most striking feature was the surge in volumes from India‘s Vadinar port, at 1.07 million tons, and Egypt‘s Sidi Kerir port, at 361,000 tons — neither of which had recorded any shipments to Ulsan through September this year. Combined, the two ports accounted for 26.0% of the month’s total imports.
New Hubs Emerge as Middle Eastern Crude Reroutes
The emergence of these new hubs stems from logistics bottlenecks and navigational risks in waters near the Middle East. Vadinar, located in India‘s Gujarat state and the second-largest source of October imports after Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu, has established itself as a new ship-to-ship transfer base for Middle Eastern crude. Such transfers, in which oil is moved from one vessel to another at sea, had been carried out mainly in waters near Oman’s Sohar port and the United Arab Emirates’ Fujairah port. But as congestion in those waters worsened, tankers have been sailing as far as the Gulf of Kutch off India’s west coast to complete the transfers.
The Sidi Kerir volumes are the product of a long-haul detour designed to avoid navigational risk in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea. Saudi Arabia loads crude at Yanbu on the Red Sea coast, ships it to Egypt‘s Ain Sukhna port, then moves it through the SUMED pipeline to Sidi Kerir on the Mediterranean. There the oil is reloaded onto very large tankers that sail across the Mediterranean and around the Cape of Good Hope at Africa’s southern tip toward Asia. Saudi crude bound for South Korea that was tracked loading in August arrived at Ulsan Port in October after a two-month voyage.
Shifts in Global Shipping Market Reflect New Routes
As volumes spread to India and Egypt, the share held by earlier alternative hubs fell sharply. In January, shortly after the outbreak of war in the Middle East, ports inside the Strait of Hormuz — Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura, Kuwait’s Mina al-Ahmadi and Iraq’s Basra — accounted for 79.5% of imports, but shipments from them stopped entirely by April. In their place, the combined share of three ports outside the strait — Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu, the UAE’s Fujairah and Oman’s Sohar — climbed from 8.4% in January to 70.6% in September.
In October, however, imports from those three outside-the-strait ports fell to 2.586 million tons, or 46.9% of the total. By port, Yanbu shipped 1.281 million tons, down 35.6% from September, while Fujairah fell 29.2% to 767,000 tons. Sohar held steady at 538,000 tons.
Ulsan Customs Office Closely Tracks Import Trends
The Ulsan Customs Office said loading ports and transfer methods are changing frequently in response to maritime shipping risks and logistics conditions. The office said it will continue to closely track import trends by loading port and shifts in freight rates to assess the impact on supply chains for the region’s refining industry, and
Original Article: Crude Bound for Ulsan Reroutes via India, Egypt as Mideast Crisis Drags On — Sedaily