SEOUL: A little-known South Korean shipowner dominated oil transits through the Strait of Hormuz in September, data from intelligence firms suggest, with the group’s vessels moving more barrels than the next three owners combined.
Ships owned by Sinokor Group carried 105.6 million barrels of crude through the waterway connecting the Persian Gulf with global markets, an analysis of ship-tracking and other data from intelligence firms Vortexa, Equasis and Signal Group showed. That’s equivalent to almost 40% of oil making the crossing last month.
The next three players - the National Shipping Co. of Saudi Arabia, also known as Bahri, the Kuwait Oil Tanker Company, and Abu Dhabi National Oil Co.’s shipping unit - accounted for a combined 97.3 million barrels during the same period, according to Bloomberg calculations based on that data. The analysis considered ownership and not vessel operators.
None of the four companies replied to requests for comment.
Sinokor, owned by tycoon Ga-Hyun Chung, gained prominence from the early weeks of the Iran war, having amassed a huge tanker fleet in the run up to the conflict through purchases or time charters.
When Hormuz was all but closed off, those tankers were snapped up at exorbitant rates by producers who needed to load oil or risk running out of storage space and then being forced to undertake costly shutdowns.
As Gulf crude exports recover to close to pre-war levels, Sinokor is still among the most active owners in the so-called shuttling trade, with its vessels taking short trips to pick up oil from inside the Persian Gulf, sail through Hormuz and then discharge at ship-to-ship transfer points in the Gulf of Oman.
Its tankers have assisted in the transporting of crude from Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and more recently also dabbled in Iraq and Qatar shipments, ship-tracking data show.
Lloyd’s List first reported Sinokor’s dominance of September transits. - Bloomberg
