Gulf Oil Exports Outpace Pre-War Levels Despite Hormuz Attack Surge

Gulf producers are shipping more crude oil out of the region than they were before the war between Iran and the United States began, even as mine and missile attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz have become more frequent, according to Middle East Eye.

The finding runs counter to the assumption that a shooting war near the world’s busiest oil chokepoint would choke off supply. Instead, exporters have adapted around the danger zone rather than through it, leaning on ship-to-ship transfers and longer routes through the Red Sea to keep volumes moving, the outlet reported.

What’s driving the resilience

Ship-to-ship transfers — where crude is moved from one tanker to another, often outside the most contested stretches of the strait — have become a workaround for shippers wary of sailing directly through waters where mines and missiles have struck vessels in recent days. Transits through the Red Sea are also absorbing some of the traffic that would otherwise pass through Hormuz, according to Middle East Eye’s reporting.

Both workarounds carry a cost. Ship-to-ship transfers are slower and more expensive than a direct run through the strait, and insurers typically charge a war-risk premium for either route. But the reporting indicates those costs have not been enough to suppress the volume of crude actually leaving the Gulf.

The result is a split between the headline risk — attacks that have set tankers ablaze and drawn global attention — and the underlying trade data, which shows exporters finding capacity elsewhere rather than idling it.

The attacks have not stopped

The export data comes against a backdrop of escalating incidents in the strait. Two tankers struck mines and caught fire in the southern approaches to Hormuz on October 20, and a supertanker was hit by a mine the following day, triggering an oil fire that briefly disrupted traffic in the area, according to reporting from October 21.

Those incidents have fed a broader pattern of maritime risk around the strait, through which roughly a fifth of global oil consumption passes on a typical day. Insurers and shipping lines have responded by rerouting where possible and relying more heavily on transfers outside the most exposed corridors — the same adaptations now showing up in the export figures.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has separately signaled it intends to keep pressure on shipping and naval traffic in the region. The IRGC’s deputy chief, Mostafa Izadi, said Wednesday that Iran has the missile capacity to target U.S. Navy vessels, according to Middle East Eye’s live coverage. That statement has not been independently verified beyond the IRGC’s own claim.

Reading the numbers

Analysis: the export data does not mean the Hormuz risk is overstated or that shipping has returned to normal. It means the market has found ways to route around a danger zone rather than through it, at a higher cost that is likely being passed on to buyers. Ship-to-ship transfers and Red Sea diversions are capacity-intensive workarounds, not a permanent fix — they depend on enough tankers, escorts, and insurance capacity being available to absorb the rerouted volume. A sustained escalation, or an attack that closes the strait outright rather than threatening individual vessels, would test the limits of that workaround in a way the current data has not yet captured.

For now, the figures suggest Gulf producers and global buyers have prioritized keeping oil moving over avoiding the strait entirely, a choice that has so far held even as the attacks themselves have intensified rather than subsided.

What to watch

Whether insurers continue to underwrite transits at current rates, and whether Iran’s stated missile capability against U.S. naval vessels translates into any action beyond rhetoric, will shape whether the current export pattern holds through the next phase of the crisis. Continued mine strikes in the southern strait — a near-weekly occurrence this month — raise the question of how long ship-to-ship transfers and Red Sea rerouting can keep pace with rising attack frequency before buyers start pricing in sustained supply risk rather than one-off disruptions.