ADNOC, QatarEnergy ships getting past Hormuz blockade

ADNOC has been quietly running a wartime shipping operation through the Strait of Hormuz, ferrying oil, fuel and gas cargoes past Iranian and U.S. naval forces to customers across Asia.

The UAE’s national oil company has relied on “dark transits” – switching off tanker transponders while crossing Hormuz – and a fleet tied to Navig8, a shipping company majority-owned by ADNOC’s logistics arm and Chinese petrochemicals giant Wanhua Chemical Group, allowing it to keep exports flowing, Bloomberg reports.

ADNOC has been among the Gulf’s most successful exporters during nearly three months of war, using short shuttle runs from Zirku Island, Ruwais and Das Island to transfer cargoes in safer waters off Fujairah, Sohar and India’s west coast before sending them onward to buyers, according to the news agency.

QatarEnergy has also quietly resumed exports through Hormuz, with the LNG tanker Al Rayyan recently detected heading toward China after disappearing from public tracking systems near Qatar’s Ras Laffan export terminal.

The urgency reflects both limited regional storage capacity and the UAE’s increasingly independent oil strategy after its formal departure from OPEC on May 1.

The successful transits, however, represent only a fraction of pre-war trade flows: Only seven shipments have been identified making it through Hormuz since the U.S. and Israel started strikes against Iran on Feb. 28, compared to roughly three exits a day before the conflict began.