More liquefied natural gas moved through the Strait of Hormuz in October than in any month since the war between the United States and Iran disrupted the waterway, vessel tracking data reported by Reuters on Tuesday showed, and part of it reached Pakistan.
Two different counters tell the story, and they measure different things. S&P Global Energy counted 31 laden LNG tankers exiting the strait in October, up from 23 in September: 23 of them loaded at Qatar’s Ras Laffan terminal and eight at Das Island in the United Arab Emirates. Kpler, which counts loadings rather than exits, recorded 42 cargoes loaded in October, up from 27 in September, with Ras Laffan alone loading 35 cargoes and more than 2.7 million tons, its highest since the war began. Das Island loadings held steady at seven.
The Pakistan link is in the Kpler data. The tanker Al Mafyar transferred its cargo at sea to two other vessels, Shandong Redwood and Ejnan, and both delivered their cargoes to Pakistan, a workaround that keeps the receiving ships from making the full Gulf run themselves. Reuters did not give the volumes or delivery dates, so how much the shipments added to Pakistan’s supply is not known from the data.
The recovery is partial, and the comparisons show it. Qatar’s October exports of about 2.7 million tons stand against roughly 6.2 million tons in February, before the war. S&P analyst Eric Yep put the Emirates back at pre-war transit levels and Qatar at a little over 30 percent of its pre-war Hormuz transits. Ras Laffan is still operating under force majeure after attacks earlier this year took out about 17 percent of Qatar’s export capacity, a loss QatarEnergy estimated at 20 billion dollars in annual revenue.
Traffic rising is not the same as the strait being open in any normal sense. The United States is maintaining a naval blockade connected to the Iran war, transits are being assisted and monitored, and ship-to-ship transfers outside the strait have become part of how cargo moves. What the October numbers show is exporters and buyers adapting to a war zone waterway, at volumes well below peacetime, as the northern hemisphere winter approaches.
Transparency note: all figures are commercial vessel tracking data, S&P Global Energy and Kpler, as reported by Reuters. The two datasets count different things, exits and loadings, and the story keeps them separate. The Pakistan deliveries are Kpler’s account; no Pakistani port or ministry confirmation was available, and no volumes or dates were published.
