Ras Tanura Oil-Tanker Capacity Seen Climbing 19% in Latest Week

The combined carrying capacity of oil tankers calling at Saudi Arabia’s Ras Tanura rose 19 percent in the week ended Aug. 31, vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg show.
The implied capacity of vessels calling at the world’s largest crude-export complex gained to the equivalent of 9.27 million barrels a day from 7.79 million barrels for the prior week, according to signals gathered by IHS Fairplay, a Coulsdon, England-based maritime research company. The data may be incomplete because not all transmissions are captured.
The Ras Tanura complex, including Ras al-Ju’aymah, is the biggest global crude terminal, according to the website of Saudi Arabian Oil Co., known as Saudi Aramco. Tankers hauling crude from the Persian Gulf may call at other loading ports before or after Ras Tanura, indicating they might have collected partial cargoes elsewhere.
The table below lists the destination countries of tankers calling at Ras Tanura in the latest week as of about 9 a.m. London time today. The percentages represent the share of the total number of ships loading at the terminal that each country is due to receive.
Very large crude carriers are assumed to carry 2 million barrels apiece, twice as much as Suezmax tankers. The tally excludes vessels smaller than Aframaxes, each holding about 650,000 barrels.
Country Barrels Percentage Percentage
Aug. 31 Aug. 24
Japan 12,000,000 18 18
South Korea 8,000,000 12 7
China 6,000,000 9 22
Taiwan 6,000,000 9 --
U.S. 6,000,000 9 9
Singapore 4,000,000 6 --
India 3,300,000 5 10
Egypt 2,000,000 3 5
Indonesia 2,000,000 3 7
Malaysia 2,000,000 3 --
Philippines 2,000,000 3 --
South Africa 2,000,000 3 --
Sri Lanka 2,000,000 3 --
U.A.E. 1,650,000 3 4
Saudi Arabia 1,300,000 2 4
Kuwait 650,000 1 --
Unspecified 4,000,000 6 11
Barrels 64,900,000
Bbl/day 9,271,429
Source: Bloomberg