Middle East oil exports reportedly topped pre-war levels last month: data

Persian Gulf oil exporters topped pre-war levels for about half of September, shipping data showed on Monday, though attacks on tankers and logistical constraints cloud the outlook for sustained higher flows. Ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz face a “heightened and increasingly unpredictable kinetic threat” given the recent sharp increase in traffic, Marisks, a shipping intelligence service, said on Saturday.The seven-day moving average for crude exports from the region was 18.3 million barrels per day (bpd) on Sept. 30, provisional data from Kpler showed, with volumes topping pre-war levels on 14 days in September.That included Gulf oil sent Hormuz, via the Red Sea, and from terminals and ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman.Shipments had earlier matched or exceeded pre-war levels on a handful of days in June and July, Kpler data showed, after Washington and Tehran reached a memorandum of understanding that has since lapsed. Story continues below advertisement Crude exports from the region averaged about 18 million bpd in the 12 months before the start of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, according to Kpler.The recent export surge has been driven by Saudi Arabia loading fr...