Something Big Just Happened in Saudi Arabia’s Oil Market

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:00]The worst energy crisis in the history of the petroleum industry has a winner.

[00:00:03]That is not a sentence anyone expected to write in the middle of a regional war, a closed strait, global oil market chaos, and an ongoing diplomatic emergency that has the world's most powerful governments scrambling for a resolution. But the data from Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg, and the IEA's May 2026 oil market report all point in the same direction. And what they are pointing at is surprising, revealing, and consequential in ways that go well beyond the immediate crisis. Saudi Arabia is winning. Not winning the war, not winning diplomacy. Winning in the one arena that Saudi Arabia has always been most fundamentally dependent on, the oil market. While the straight of Hormuz sits effectively closed, while 600 tankers are stranded inside the Persian Gulf and 240 more are waiting outside. While global inventories are drawing down at the fastest pace ever recorded, while jet fuel is running short and refineries are cutting output, Saudi Arabia has quietly repositioned itself into the most advantageous oil market position it has occupied in at least a decade. The Hormuz crisis that looks from the outside like a catastrophe for every Gulf oil producer is for Saudi Arabia specifically something far more complicated. And understanding why tells you something important about both the structure of the global oil market and the specific decisions that NBS made before, during, and after the shooting started. Start with the number that Bloomberg published on May 2nd, 2026, citing Goldman Sachs Group analysis. The Hormuz blockade is creating an economic split among oil exporters in the Persian Gulf with Saudi Arabia and Oman set for a windfall while others including the United Arab Emirates are seeing a drop in petro dollar income. That sentence contains a distinction that most coverage of the Hormuz crisis has not explored in sufficient depth because most coverage has treated the Gulf as a monolithic affected region rather than a collection of countries with very different geographic pipeline and infrastructure assets that respond very differently to a straight closure. The distinction is simple in concept and enormous in consequence. Saudi Arabia has a pipeline bypass. The UAE, Kuwait, Iraq, and Qatar largely do not. The East West pipeline, the Petrolane, runs across the width of the Arabian Peninsula from Saudi Arabia's oil richch eastern province to the Red Sea terminal at Yanbu. It was built specifically as a strategic bypass for exactly this scenario. A crisis in the straight of Hormuz that makes tanker export through the Persian Gulf impossible or prohibitively dangerous. A Ramco CEO Amin Nasser confirmed on the company's first quarter 2026 earnings call that the petroline had been ramped to its maximum capacity of 7 million barrels per day. an engineering achievement that required intensive operational management and that represents the full design throughput of a pipeline that normally runs well below capacity in peace time. Of those 7 million barrels per day, approximately 2 million go to refineries on Saudi Arabia's western coast, leaving 5 million barrels per day flowing out through the Yanbu terminal on the Red Sea for export to international markets, available for sale, loadable onto tankers, and completely bypassing the closed Hormuz choke point. Now, compare that to the UAE. Abu Dhabi has its own pipeline bypass, the Abu Dhabi crude oil pipeline, which runs to the port of Fujera on the Gulf of Omen coast outside the straight. Before the war, Fujera was a major oil trading and bunkering hub.

[00:03:17]Described as the world's second largest bunkering location after Singapore, specifically because of its position outside Hormuz. During the crisis, the UAE has been loading tankers at Fujera to bypass the strait. But, and this is the critical difference, the UAE's bypass pipeline capacity is significantly lower than Saudi Arabia's petroline. The Abu Dhabi pipeline can handle approximately 1.5 million barrels per day in normal operations. Even with emergency expansion measures, the UAE's total pipeline bypass capacity is a fraction of Saudi Arabia's. The UAE was exporting approximately 2.8 to 3 million barrels per day before the conflict.

[00:03:54]Saudi Arabia's bypass pipeline moves 5 million barrels per day. The mismatch between the UAE's pre-war export volume and its bypass capacity means that the UAE is leaving significant export volume stranded inside the Gulf. Oil it is produced, oil it could sell at record high prices, but oil it cannot physically move to market because the pipeline that bypasses the straight is not large enough to carry at all.

[00:04:17]Goldman Sachs calculated that for Saudi Arabia, the higher oil prices more than compensated for lost shipments through the straight. For the UAE, by contrast, the steep fall in oil income reflects a situation where the detourred barrels only partially mitigate the impact from Hormuz's closure. Iraq and Kuwait face an even starker version of the UAE's problem, one with no pipeline solution available at any scale. Both countries export the I'm overwhelming majority of their crude oil through Basra on the Persian Gulf directly inside the closed straight zone with no access to the Red Sea or Gulf of Omen without crossing the very waterway that Iran has effectively sealed. Neither country has a viable pipeline bypass to an alternative export terminal that could handle even a fraction of their pre-war export volumes. Iraq's southern export facilities at Bosra, through which approximately 90s% of Iraq's oil revenues flow are inside the Gulf with nowhere to go when the strait is closed.

[00:05:09]Kuwait's entire export infrastructure similarly depends on Hormuz access. Both governments have been forced to dramatically curtail production because storage tanks on their eastern coasts are filling to capacity with oil that has no exit route. Cutting production is not an economic choice when storage is full. It is a physical necessity. The IEA's May 26 OMR confirmed that output from Gulf. Countries affected by the Hormuse's closure was 14.4 million barrels per day below pre-war levels. a number that reflects not just reduced demand, but the physical impossibility of moving oil to market from terminals that sit behind a closed waterway.

[00:05:47]Iraq's GDP, which depends on oil revenues for approximately 90% of its income, faces a contraction that the government has no policy tool to address. Kuwait's foreign exchange reserves built up during years of high oil prices are absorbing the revenue loss. Saudi Arabia sitting behind its functioning petrol line with 5 million barrels per day flowing through Yanbu at crisis prices is in a categorically different economic position from every one of its Gulf neighbors except Oman which has its own small bypass capability through the Musket coast. The price mechanism is the second force working in Saudi Arabia's favor and it compounds the pipeline advantage into something that Goldman Sachs is calling a windfall. When the Hormuz crisis began in late February 2026, Brent crude was trading around $63 per barrel. By late March, it had surged to over $130 per barrel. The World Bank's April commodity markets. Outlook recorded Brent rising approximately 65% in a single month, the highest monthly increase in the history of oil price tracking. Even as Saudi Arabia's absolute export volume through Yamu is lower than its total pre-war export capacity through Rust Tanura and Yamboo combined, every barrel it is selling through Yanbu is selling at a price roughly double what it was selling for before the war. 5 million barrels per day at $30 generates dramatically more revenue than 7 million barrels per day at $63. The arithmetic of the windfall is straightforward, but the numbers are worth making explicit.

[00:07:12]Volume is down significantly from pre-war levels, but price is up more than 100%. Producing a net revenue position that is dramatically better than what Saudi Arabia was earning before the crisis. Saudi Arabia was running a national budget deficit at $63 oil, needing approximately $90 per barrel to balance government accounts.

[00:07:30]At $130 with 5 million barrels per day through Yamu, the math reverses entirely. Aramco confirmed this directly. The CEO acknowledged that Aramco profits had jumped despite the Middle East conflict driven by elevated crude prices and emergency export rrooting. Aramco's net income for the first quarter of 2026 exceeded the projections that analysts had made before the war began. The OPEC plus dimension of what has happened in Saudi Arabia's oil market is equally significant and equally underreported in coverage. That is focused primarily on the military and diplomatic dimensions of the crisis. On May 3rd, 2026, Al Jazer reported that OPEC Plus had agreed to a modest, largely symbolic oil output increase of 188,000 barrels per day for June. And buried in that story was a sentence that deserves far more strategic attention than it received. The UAE, one of OPEC Plus's most important members and historically one of Saudi Arabia's most significant internal competitors within the cartel, had quit the organization the Friday before the meeting. The seven countries that issued the OPEC plus production statement, Algeria, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Oman, Russia, and Saudi Arabia, made no mention of the UAE. The UAE's departure was not acknowledged, not discussed, not addressed. It was simply not mentioned as though the organization was proceeding on a business as usual basis with seven members rather than eight.

[00:08:50]Because acknowledging the departure would have required acknowledging the fracture in Gulf solidarity that Saudi Arabia's diplomatic posture has been trying to paper over with its deescalation messaging. The UAE's decision to exit OPEC plus was driven by the same infrastructure and strategic logic that produced the Bloomberg documented revenue split. The UAE has been investing for years in expanding its production capacity toward 5 million barrels per day by 2027, specifically to maximize hydrocarbon revenues before the long-term energy transition reduces the value of Middle Eastern reserves. Within OPEC plus, the UAE has been constrained by a quota that the group negotiated to support prices. Outside OPEC plus, the UAE is free to produce and export at whatever rate its infrastructure and markets allow. Given that the Hormuz closure had already severely constrained UAE export volumes for reasons entirely outside its control, the additional constraint of an OPEC plus production quota was purely theoretical during the crisis. You cannot exceed a quota that you physically cannot export. Leaving the cartel when you cannot export anyway costs Abu Dhabi nothing in the short term. And removing the quota constraint positions the UAE to produce and sell as much oil as possible when the strait eventually reopens. and production constrained inventories need to be replenished at whatever prices the market will pay. Saudi Arabia watching the UAE's departure managed it publicly by presenting the remaining seven member grouping as fully functional and committed to market stability. Exactly what the OPEC plus statement accomplished when it named the seven remaining members and said nothing about the eight. But within the cartel, the UAE's departure marks a permanent shift in the internal balance of OPEC plus that will shape its dynamics for years after the crisis ends. The strategic logic behind the UAE's OPEC departure announced on April 29th, 2026. According to the Alazer report, is connected to the same infrastructure and geopolitical dynamics that produced the revenue split Bloomberg identified. The UAE has been investing heavily for years in expanding its oil production capacity toward 5 million barrels per day by 2027 with the explicit goal of maximizing hydrocarbon revenues before the long-term energy transition reduces the value of those reserves. Within OPEC plus, the UAE had a quota that constrained how much it could produce and export. Outside OPEC plus, it is free to produce at whatever rate its infrastructure allows and whatever price the market will pay.

[00:11:10]Given that the Hormuse's closure has already severely constrained UAE export volumes through factors entirely outside its control, the additional constraint of an OPEC plus quota became purely theoretical. You cannot exceed a production quota. You cannot export.

[00:11:25]Leaving OPEC plus when you're physically unable to export anyway costs the UAE nothing in the short term and removes a constraint that will matter enormously to Abu Dhabi's strategy in the post crisis period when the strait reopens and the kingdom wants to maximize volume. Saudi Arabia watching the UAE's departure is managing it as a business as usual press by presenting the remaining seven member grouping as fully functional and committed to market stability. Exactly what the OPEC plus statement said when it made no mention of the UAE at all. The petrol line itself, the pipeline that is generating Saudi Arabia's windfall, has become one of the most consequential pieces of energy infrastructure in the world during this crisis and Aramco is treating it with the operational intensity of wartime logistics. Nasser confirmed on the earnings call that Aramco is actively considering ways to expand export capacity at Yanbu, the Red Sea terminal where the Petrolines oil enters tankers for international distribution. In peace time, a Yanboo expansion decision would involve years of feasibility studies, environmental assessments, capital allocation processes, and contractor selection. The standard timeline for major energy infrastructure that does not need to be rushed. In the current crisis, it is a strategic imperative being evaluated at a wartime tempo. Every additional barrel per day of Yamboo loading capacity that Saudi Arabia can commission represents another barrel that can be sold at $130 prices rather than stranded inside a Gulf where tankers are trapped and storage is filling. Aramco's engineering teams are working through the specific constraints. Loading birth capacity, pipeline manifold configurations, crude blending and staging limitations to identify what can be done quickly and what requires longer construction timelines. The fact that NASA mentioned this publicly on an earnings call where every word is carefully chosen for investor communication purposes signals that the Yamboo expansion is not a theoretical discussion. It is an active program that Aramco wants its investors to know about and to credit as part of the company's crisis response strategy.

[00:13:21]The Jafura gas development, Aramco's landmark investment in Saudi Arabia's largest unconventional gas field, valued at over 100 billion dollars across all development phases, adds a domestic dimension to Saudi Arabia's oil market story that is separate from but directly connected to the crisisdriven windfall.

[00:13:39]The Jaffra field located in the UA Eastern Province and described by Blackidge Research as the largest unconventional gas project in the region is designed to boost Saudi gas production by more than 60% by 2030 compared to 2021 levels. Phase two of the development is valued at 12.4 billion, covering gas compression, pipelines, and new processing facilities, including the RIA NGL fractionation plant. Phase three costing $8.8 $8 billion focuses on expanding the pipeline network and adding 3.15 billion cubic feet per day of processing capacity. Phase 1 was on track for startup in 2025. The development has continued on its timeline even as the external crisis royals the international hydrocarbon market because Jafora's primary purpose is domestic energy transformation not export and the crisis has not changed the domestic argument for reducing oil burning in Saudi power generation. Every cubic foot of Japora gas that displaces oil in Saudi Arabia's power grid is a barrel of crude oil that Saudi Arabia does not consume domestically and can instead route through the petroline to Yanvu for export at $130.

[00:14:47]The internal energy efficiency transformation that Jaffura represents has a direct immediate and mathematically significant revenue implication in a crisis environment where every marginal export barrel is selling at roughly double its pre-war price. Saudi Arabia is simultaneously managing a crisis and building the infrastructure that will make it more profitable and more resilient after the crisis ends. The Aramco CEO's warning about 27 normalization. His statement that if the straight of Hormuz opens today, it will still take months for the market to rebalance and if its opening is delayed a few more weeks, normalization will last into 2027 carries implications for Saudi Arabia's revenue window that the financial markets have been pricing in real time.

[00:15:28]If normalization does not occur until 2027, Saudi Arabia has potentially 12 to 18 more months of selling oil through the petroline at elevated crisis prices, a revenue runway that no pre-war budget planning model had factored in. At 5 million barrels per day through Yamboo at prices between 100 and $130 per barrel, Saudi Arabia is generating daily oil export revenue in the range of $500 to $650 million, well above the fiscal break even that the government needs to balance its books and fund the capital programs that vision 2030 requires. That is a revenue windfall of a scale that could produce a very different budget picture than the one Saudi Arabia was facing before February 28th when the kingdom was running a deficit at $63 oil and watching its vision 2030 funding math get complicated by low oil revenues. The crisis that was threatening the vision 2030 timeline has paradoxically through the mechanism of the petroline in the price spike generated the kind of oil revenue surplus that could fund vision 2030's most expensive phases if Riad manages it carefully. The irony is almost too pointed to be comfortable. The war that Saudi Arabia most wanted to avoid, that is landing Iranian missiles on Saudi refineries and depleting Saudi air defenses, is simultaneously generating more oil revenue per barrel than Saudi Arabia has seen in years. The Zulof offshore oil field expansion, one of Aramco's largest offshore development projects in recent years, adds a final layer to the picture of what is happening in Saudi Arabia's oil market infrastructure. Aramco approved the Zuliff expansion to add more than 600,000 barrels per day of production capacity with contracts awarded to industry leaders including McDermott and Larsson and Tubro for offshore platforms, subc infrastructure and pipelines feeding into a central processing plant capable of handling up to 600,000 barrels per day of Arabian heavy crude. This expansion project was in progress before the Hormuz crisis began and it has continued on its development timeline. When Zulfiff reaches full operational capacity, Aramco gains additional production volume that it can route through the petrol line, additional barrels that in a postwar recovery period, when prices remain elevated as inventories rebuild, will flow straight into the highest margin revenue window Saudi Arabia has ever operated in. The kingdom that entered 2026, worried about budget deficits, is building the production and export infrastructure to exit the crisis period as the world's most profitable oil producer at the moment when the world most needs its oil. None of this removes the genuine costs and genuine dangers that Saudi Arabia faces. 400 Pac 3 interceptors remaining from 2,800. Ros Tanura struck twice. The Alcarge residential area hit 1.8 million Hodgej pilgrims in Mecca. A non-oil PMI that fell below 50 for the first time in March. These are real costs being paid in real security, real economic disruption, and real human vulnerability. The windfall does not cancel the danger, but it does change the calculus of how long Saudi Arabia can sustain a situation that is simultaneously damaging and profitable, and it explains perhaps more clearly than any diplomatic theory why Saudi Arabia is running its emergency diplomacy the way it is, with enough urgency to seek a negotiated end to the crisis, but without the desperation of a country whose financial foundation is collapsing underneath it. Saudi Arabia can afford to negotiate carefully. It can afford to push for the Helsinki framework rather than accepting any ceasefire terms that Washington or Tehran proposes. It can afford to block Project Freedom from using its bases and wait for the right deal. Because the petroline is pumping at maximum capacity, the Yamoo terminal is loading tankers as fast as it can and every barrel is selling at $130.

[00:19:00]Something big has happened in Saudi Arabia's oil market. And for once in the middle of a crisis that has been bad for almost everyone, what has happened for Saudi Arabia is a windfall.