Workaround or a New System?
A year ago, a cluster of tankers anchored off Sohar might have attracted little attention. Today, it raises a far bigger question: is Oman becoming the center of a parallel oil market operating beyond traditional oversight? - Ikram Elloumi, Research Director at Wood Mackenzie.
In the week ending on June 10, Vessel Tracker AIS and satellite data identified multiple ship-to-ship (STS) transfers off the Omani coast involving millions of barrels of crude and refined products. If current activity continues, annual volumes could reach tens of millions of barrels moving through an offshore hub that publishes no loading statistics and attracts little public scrutiny.
The obvious question isn’t whether these transfers are significant. It’s why they are happening at such scale.
Several explanations exist. Cargoes may be coming from offshore storage, allowing oil to be sold without a clear paper trail. Exporters disrupted by the Hormuz crisis may be using STS transfers to keep crude flowing through alternative channels. Or something more permanent may be emerging: a shadow trading network designed to move oil outside traditional visibility and enforcement mechanisms.
The evidence is difficult to ignore. Russian-linked vessels, opaque ownership structures, ambiguous cargo origins, and repeated transfers in a location offering strategic advantages—deep water, limited oversight, and Oman’s neutral position.
But the most important questions are not about individual ships:
- How much oil is now bypassing conventional market transparency?
- If significant volumes are being sold through offshore networks at discounted prices, are benchmark prices like Brent still reflecting the true state of Gulf crude markets?
- Who finances and operates this growing fleet of vessels that exists largely outside Western insurance and compliance systems?
- And what role is Oman playing? Is it merely hosting commercial activity in international waters, or benefiting from a deliberate policy of strategic ambiguity?
The broader concern is that this may no longer be a temporary response to geopolitical disruption. The infrastructure exists. The demand exists. The economics work.
What started as a workaround may be evolving into a parallel system.
The real story is not the tankers anchored off Sohar. It is the network behind them—traders, financiers, operators, and buyers quietly building an alternative supply chain for global oil.
The question policymakers, regulators, and markets should be asking is simple:
At what point does the shadow market stop being an exception and become part of the global energy system itself?
