Iraq Selling Oil to Abu Dhabi to Shuttle Through the Strait of Hormuz Cloaked

Energy News Beat

Iraq’s state oil marketer SOMO has confirmed that Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) is among the buyers of its crude, with cargoes exiting via the Strait of Hormuz amid ongoing regional conflict and severe disruptions to normal shipping.

Ali Nizar, director-general of SOMO, stated in a text message that “Adnoc is one of the buyers SOMO deals with,” along with other companies. He added that SOMO has been selling to whoever can load oil onto ships and exit the Strait of Hormuz.

This confirmation aligns with reporting that ADNOC has been offering to shuttle Iraqi crude—primarily Basrah grades and other volumes—through the strait using the same “dark-transit” playbook it and others have employed for Gulf exports. In these operations, vessels make short shuttle runs, often with Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders switched off to reduce detection risk, then transfer cargoes ship-to-ship (STS) to larger tankers waiting outside the Gulf for delivery to Asian refiners and other buyers.

SOMO has been offering deep discounts—reportedly as much as $25–$30 per barrel below benchmark prices for August loadings of Basrah Medium and other grades—to incentivize companies willing to take the Hormuz risk. Exports have recently risen to around 2 million barrels per day, according to SOMO comments, after earlier production shut-ins when southern Iraqi fields lost access during peak disruptions. Previously, trading house Vitol and TotalEnergies had been the main carriers of Iraqi volumes; ADNOC’s entry expands the options.

The Rise of Cloaked/Dark Tanker Traffic in the Strait of Hormuz

What was once primarily a sanctions-evasion tactic used by Iranian and Russian “shadow” or “dark” fleets has become standard operating procedure for commercial non-sanctioned tankers moving legitimate Gulf crude. Vessels disable AIS (or operate with limited or spoofed signals) during transit of the high-risk waterway, load or shuttle inside the Gulf, and only reappear after STS transfers in safer waters such as the Gulf of Oman or off Fujairah.

Maritime analytics firms report that dark activity now dominates remaining Hormuz traffic:

In periods tracked since the escalation of the Iran-related conflict, 57–65%+ of outbound laden transits occurred dark, rising higher in some weeks (e.g., nearly 70% in mid-July periods and 62–79% for crude tankers in more recent samples of ~100 transits).

Roughly 70 very large crude carriers form a core “shuttle” fleet using the southern Oman-hugging corridor while remaining dark; many perform repeated short runs and STS transfers. Estimates of crude still leaving via this southern route have ranged around 2–5 million barrels per day in recent months—far below pre-conflict levels of roughly 15–21 million bpd through Hormuz, but enough to prevent a total cutoff.

Non-Iranian operators (UAE-linked, Iraqi, Qatari, Kuwaiti, Saudi) now account for a large and growing share of dark movements. Standard AIS-based trackers therefore significantly undercount actual oil flows; satellite imagery, SAR, and multi-source intelligence are required to fill the gaps. Volumes that “disappear” during dark periods are not fully reflected in many public or commercial flow datasets until (or unless) vessels reappear and cargoes are matched.

Global dark-fleet activity has also surged. Windward tracked a sharp rise in prolonged dark events in Q2 2026 (over 3,000 events involving more than 2,000 vessels), driven by both sanctions circumvention and conflict-related risk avoidance in the Middle East Gulf.

The broader shadow/dark fleet (including sanctioned and high-risk tonnage) numbers in the low-to-mid thousands of vessels and moves hundreds of millions of barrels of oil monthly, which is harder to track in real time.

These cloaked movements mean official or AIS-only tallies of oil leaving the Gulf systematically miss a material portion of actual supply reaching markets—contributing to the “flying blind” characterization of current oil-market visibility.

Dark and Transponder-Off Traffic at the Bab el-Mandeb Strait

A parallel pattern has intensified at the Bab el-Mandeb (the southern entrance to the Red Sea), driven by Houthi threats targeting Saudi-linked and other shipping. Overall vessel crossings have fallen sharply from pre-escalation levels (recent averages in the mid-20s to high-30s per day versus historical peaks near 50–70), with tanker traffic hit harder.AIS data alone undercounts reality:

Satellite/SAR imagery has repeatedly shown gaps—for example, one mid-August snapshot recorded 8 AIS-transmitting vessels in the mid-strait corridor versus 12 total (4 dark, including three tanker-scale vessels of ~290–330 m running interleaved with transmitting traffic). This implies AIS-only pictures can undercount by roughly one-third on a given day.

Saudi Red Sea loadings at Yanbu have shifted heavily or fully dark: analysts report most or all recent liftings conducted with AIS off to avoid association with Houthi targeting lists. Tracked Saudi flows through Bab el-Mandeb have dropped dramatically in some datasets (from multi-million bpd levels earlier to well under 1–2 million in later readings), with the discrepancy partly attributed to vessels going dark rather than purely lower pipeline throughput.

Dark activity near the strait and at Saudi ports has risen sharply as a security response. Some Chinese-linked vessels have continued transmitting openly (consistent with reported case-by-case understandings), while many others—including tankers—operate dark or with limited signals.

The dual-chokepoint pressure (Hormuz + Bab el-Mandeb/Red Sea) has pushed more oil onto longer Cape of Good Hope routes or into these cloaked short-haul/shuttle models, further degrading transparency in global seaborne crude accounting.

Iraq’s decision to sell to ADNOC and lean on cloaked shuttle logistics is a pragmatic response to the new reality: normal, fully visible tanker traffic through Hormuz remains severely constrained and risky. Dark operations keep barrels moving—but at the cost of incomplete market data, higher operational complexity, elevated insurance and freight costs, and greater reliance on satellite and alternative intelligence to understand true supply.

As long as the security environment in both straits remains degraded, cloaked and dark tanker activity will continue to hide a non-trivial share of Middle East oil flows from conventional tracking systems.

Make no mistake, the paper or traded oil prices we see on the news for WTI and Brent are not what the refineries are paying, and what is turning into useful gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, and other products. Until insurance rates, longer transit times, and higher tanker rates come down, gasoline and diesel prices can’t come down.

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