08OCT2019 - NEWS - ADNOC Gets Serious About Its Oil Exports Bypassing Strait Of Hormuz Via Fujairah

Abu Dhabi, which pumps most of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) crude oil, increasingly appears to have had enough of Iranian belligerence and threats to close the Strait of Hormuz; Persian Gulf’s maritime artery through which over 30% of the world’s traded black gold passes.

In its bid to remove that vulnerability, the oil rich emirate’s state-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) is counting on its petrodollars and a little help from its sister emirate – Fujairah; once a sleepy bunkering hub, but now a flourishing oil storage and shipping port complete with a free-trade zone.

And Fujairah certainly has all the kit and caboodle crude oil and product shippers would demand and then some, including a matrix manifold facility. To the uninitiated, that’s a facility which provides operators with the flexibility to buy and blend product from different tanks and terminals without the need for a mediator vessel using interconnected terminals.

But above it all – it’s all about location, location, and well location for Dr Sultan Al Jaber, Chief Executive Officer of ADNOC. For Fujairah is the only one of the seven emirates that make up the UAE with a coastline solely on the Gulf of Oman and none on the Persian Gulf that the Iranians are so fond of threatening to close.