LONDON, 07 August. - (ANA) - With the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb disrupted, Saudi Arabia’s crude has one last exit: Egypt’s Suez Canal. But the detour is costly: Reuters estimated the longer route adds about $2.5 million in shipping costs per journey to Asia, stretching a typical voyage to Taiwan from 19 to 48 days via Suez, the Mediterranean, and around the Cape of Good Hope.

 

While the kingdom has previously used the Suez route to export some of its oil, it has not tested it as the main export outlet for decades.

 

Unlike in the ​1970s and 1980s, when Saudi Arabia's top oil buyers sat in Europe ​and the United States, the majority of its buyers today ⁠are in Asia.

 

To get to Asia, tankers with Saudi oil will have to ​circumnavigate the whole of Africa, adding around a month to their journey.

 

The Suez Canal is also a bottleneck. Very Large Crude Carriers — the workhorses of Saudi Arabia’s export fleet — are too big to sail through fully laden. Instead, barrels must be offloaded and pumped through Egypt’s Sumed pipeline before being reloaded in the Mediterranean. 

 

Israel’s Eilat-Ashkelon pipeline is the other Red Sea-Mediterranean link: In the past, moving Saudi crude through that would have been “unthinkable,” writes Bloomberg’s Javier Blas, but “desperate times may call for desperate measures.”   

 

It takes only ​19 days for a tanker to sail from Saudi Arabia's Red Sea port of Yanbu to Taiwan via Bab el-Mandeb.

 

A route via Suez, the Mediterranean and Gibraltar and then around ​the Cape of Good Hope takes 48 days, according to Kpler and LSEG ​shipping data. 

 

The journey would double fuel costs alone to around $2.87 million from $1.26 million, according to Reuters ‌calculations ⁠using LSEG data.  - (ANA) -

 

AB/ANA/07 August 2026 - - -