India’s Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd. (MRPL) has become the first Indian refinery to tell crude suppliers to avoid both the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea, inserting the restriction into a spot tender for up to 1 million barrels of crude.
The tender seeks cargoes for delivery between August 25 and September 6 and specifies that crude loading or transit through either the Red Sea or the Strait of Hormuz is to be avoided. Business Standard reported that no previous Indian refiner has included the requirement in a spot crude import tender.
The decision follows a week of disruption across the Middle East’s two key oil shipping corridors. Houthi forces have targeted vessels operating in the Red Sea after declaring a blockade on Saudi exports, while tanker movements through Hormuz remain well below normal despite the suspension of U.S. and Iranian strikes.
Business Standard reported that MRPL did not award its previous crude tender, and noted that the company intends to retain the routing restrictions in future spot tenders if conditions in West Asia do not improve.
Tanker traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait remains near multi-month lows. Only 11 commodity tankers transited the chokepoint on Sunday, including seven oil tankers. Two very large crude carriers were sailing toward Saudi Arabia’s Yanbu export terminal to load crude, while maritime intelligence firm Windward reported that tankers loading at Yanbu have shifted to AIS-dark operations while alongside the terminal.
Brent crude prices fell sharply Monday to ~$88 in early morning trading after Washington and Tehran halted military strikes, but tanker traffic through both the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and the Strait of Hormuz has yet to recover.
By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com
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