Which Oil Buyers Have Most at Stake as Mideast Tensions Rise
A run through who has what at stake in the Persian Gulf if oil flows get disrupted
Tensions in the Middle East are rising to the point where U.S. President Donald Trump has even started talking about who pays for the protection of the Strait of Hormuz, a shipping corridor through which one third of all seaborne petroleum passes.
This article takes a look at which nations get their oil supplies from the Persian Gulf – and from exactly where in the region they load those barrels.
Trump made the point that Asian buyers rely on shipments through Hormuz far more than the U.S. does. And on that point, he’s right (albeit some of his figures were off the mark). Only a small proportion of the crude and condensate, a form of light oil extracted from gas fields, that leaves the region now heads for American ports. In the past three months, it accounted for about 800,000 barrels a day, or just 6% of the total shipments from the Persian Gulf ports in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.
Most of the nations’ oil exports head east to China, India, Japan, South Korea and a host of other Asian countries. Together Asian buyers hoover up more than 80% of all the crude and condensate shipped through Hormuz. So they’re an easy target for Trump to say they should do more to protect shipping through the waterway.