Saudi Aramco’s Post-Crisis Strategy: Global Oil Storage Expansion After the Strait of Hormuz Disruption

The Existing Asian Storage Footprint

Aramco’s current international storage is heavily concentrated in Asia, built over more than a decade of bilateral agreements:

• Japan (Okinawa): Aramco stores up to 8.2 million barrels at the Okinawa facility under a long-term agreement with the Japanese government, renewed as recently as December 2022, giving Japan a priority claim in emergencies . In 2022, Aramco also signed a deal with ENEOS for storage at the Kiire terminal in southwestern Japan, the largest crude storage facility in the country with a total capacity over 46 million barrels .
• South Korea (Ulsan): In 2023, Aramco struck a joint inventory management deal with Korea National Oil Corp. (KNOC) to store 5.3 million barrels of Saudi crude at KNOC’s Ulsan base, strengthening the company’s position in Northeast Asia .
• China (Zhoushan): As part of a broader refinery and petrochemical agreement with Zhejiang Petroleum & Chemical Corp. (ZPC), Aramco maintains a target minimum storage level of about 11 million barrels at Zhoushan .
• Broader network: During the crisis, one analyst estimated Aramco’s total storage capacity outside the Kingdom at 30-35 million barrels, spanning Japan, the Netherlands, South Korea, China, and Egypt .

What the Crisis Revealed: The Vulnerability of a Chokepoint

The Strait of Hormuz carries roughly 20% of the world’s oil supply, and its effective closure from late February 2026 created an immediate supply chain crisis . Saudi storage sites filled rapidly: Kayrros reported that the Ju’aymah terminal on Saudi Arabia’s east coast “was quickly running out of spare capacity” as of March 1 . Four of six tanks at the Ras Tanura refinery—halted after Iranian attacks—were full . Shipping costs at Yanbu, the Red Sea port, surged to $28 million per tanker as Aramco scrambled to divert oil away from Hormuz .

The Emergency Reroute: East-West Pipeline to Maximum Capacity

Aramco’s immediate operational response was to sharply ramp up its East-West Pipeline—a 750-mile system connecting the eastern oil fields to the Red Sea—to its maximum capacity of 7.0 million barrels per day in Q1 2026 . This was a dramatic increase from the pre-crisis flow of about 2.8 million barrels per day . The pipeline allowed Saudi Arabia to divert roughly 70% of its normal crude production through the Red Sea, according to Aramco’s March 2026 assessment .

However, the bypass had limits. The Oxford Analysis of the crisis noted that “available bypass capacity currently covers less than a third of normal Hormuz throughput” . The lesson was clear: a single pipeline is a valuable but incomplete solution.

Market Outlook: The CEO’s Stark Warning

On May 11, 2026, during Aramco’s Q1 earnings call, CEO Amin Nasser delivered one of the starkest warnings in the company’s history. He stated that even if the Strait of Hormuz reopened immediately, “it will take a few months for the oil market to rebalance”—and if the disruption continued beyond mid-June, “normalization will last into 2027” . Nasser described the crisis as “the largest energy supply shock the world has ever witnessed” . The global market had already lost about 1 billion barrels of supply during the first months of the crisis .

Financial Capacity: Q1 2026 Profits Rose 26%

Despite the disruption—or in part because of soaring oil prices—Aramco reported strong Q1 2026 results. Adjusted net income rose 26% year-over-year to $33.6 billion, beating analyst consensus by $2.4 billion . The company’s Q1 report emphasized that the East-West Pipeline ramp-up, combined with domestic and international storage, provided “additional optionality” during the period, and flagged “strategic investment in critical infrastructure and robust contingency planning” as a priority going forward .

The Strategic Logic: From Contingency to Core Strategy

The core lesson Aramco appears to have drawn from the crisis is that domestic storage plus one pipeline bypass is not sufficient for a world where key chokepoints can be closed for months. The company’s emerging strategy is to add larger international storage capacity and reinforce critical infrastructure so it can keep crude moving to customers even when a major chokepoint is disrupted . By positioning storage closer to major demand centers in Asia and beyond, Aramco reduces its exposure to strait-based disruptions and gains the flexibility to pre-position crude far from conflict zones.

The strategic pivot also aligns with broader industry thinking. The Oxford analysis argued that expanding Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline and the UAE’s Fujairah corridor “is, at this point, as much a security investment as an infrastructure one” . Aramco’s storage expansion plan reflects the same calculus: in a world of heightened geopolitical risk, resilient infrastructure is the only durable hedge.

Summary of Key Strategy Elements