To bypass the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia snatches unused oil tankers for lease.

Saudi Arabia's largest oil transportation company is booking oil tankers at extremely high rates. Currently, a large fleet of ships is heading to the Red Sea to load the country's crude oil, in order to bypass the export blockade caused by the bottleneck at the Strait of Hormuz. According to the charter list, the Saudi Arabian National Shipping Company has recently leased at least six very large crude carriers to transport oil from the western port of Yanbu. A ship broker and two ship owners stated that they believe the company's chartering scale may be even larger, and more transactions may surface in the coming days. Due to the Middle East conflicts causing exports through the Strait of Hormuz to be effectively stalled, Saudi Arabia is intensifying efforts to reroute crude oil to the Red Sea through oil pipelines.