ByCharles Kennedy– Mar 13, 2025, 10:30 AM CDT
The major oil producers in the Middle East are exporting record volumes of refined petroleum products, reducing the overall impact of their crude production cuts on the market, Reuters reports, citing flow-tracking data and analysts.
OPEC+ producers have been curtailing crude oil production and supply for years, aiming to balance and “stabilize the market,” as it repeatedly says.
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But the key OPEC+ producers in the Gulf saw their combined fuel exports jump to a record high last year. This has likely negated part of the potential bullish driver coming from the crude production cuts, especially amid slowing Chinese fuel demand growth, according to the Reuters analysis.
The OPEC+ agreement covers the production of crude oil in OPEC and the dozen non-OPEC producers led by Russia that are part of the pact. Refined products are not included in the deal.
So for the Middle Eastern producers with sufficient refining capacity, exports of fuels boost petroleum revenues without infringing on crude oil production quotas.
Shipments by sea of fuels from the Gulf states rose by 7% last year to a new record high, according to data from Kpler and OilX cited by Reuters.
OPEC’s heavyweights Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Kuwait, as well as Oman (not an OPEC producer but an OPEC+ member) exported on average 5.51 million barrels per day (bpd) of refined petroleum products in 2024, up by more than 7% on the year, per the data.
Over the past decade and a half, most Gulf producers have increased their refining capacity and the Middle East has been one of the key regions driving global refining capacity additions in recent years.
Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), for example, commissioned in 2022 the massive new Al-Zour Refinery, one of the largest crude processing plants in the Middle East.
The refinery, which operator Kuwait Integrated Petroleum Industries Company (KIPIC) says is the world’s largest grass-root refinery with 615,000 bpd capacity, began ramping up operations in 2023.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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