Bahri's Q3 Profit Leaps Tenfold to $1.4bn as War Drives Tanker Rates

Bahri, Saudi Arabia's national shipping company, posted a tenfold jump in third-quarter net income to 5.1 billion riyals — about $1.4 billion — as war-driven freight rates and booming chartering lifted its oil tanker business.

A year earlier the firm earned just 513 million riyals, meaning quarterly profit grew roughly ten times over, the company said in a stock exchange statement on Wednesday. Sales at its oil unit also climbed by about 10 times, on higher rates and stronger chartering levels.

The windfall comes from a war. US and Israeli attacks on Iran at the end of February triggered a regional conflict that led to the blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, the chokepoint at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. Since then, attacks on tankers transiting the waterway have failed to stop a rising flow of oil out of the Gulf.

For Bahri, the commercial upside has come at a human cost. Several of its vessels were attacked during the period, and two of the company's mariners were killed in the incidents, Chief Executive Officer Ahmed Al Subaey said in the statement. He added that the regional war has contributed to "an exceptionally complex operating environment."

One of the company's ships, the Sidr, was involved in an incident in Hormuz on Aug. 31, according to earlier reports.

What does this change for Gulf oil flows?

Plenty, and mostly in Aramco's favour. Bahri — officially the National Shipping Company of Saudi Arabia — has been instrumental in helping the state oil producer ramp up crude exports through Hormuz.

Aramco has been chasing market share by supplying mainly Chinese buyers with oil via ship-to-ship transfers conducted outside the strait. That workaround matters because the company's East-West pipeline was attacked and temporarily put out of service in September, closing the overland bypass.

The broader picture is one of adaptation. Overall Gulf oil exports have recovered to near pre-war levels as more regional producers push barrels through Hormuz. Their toolkit is pragmatic: convoys with military protection, and AIS transponders switched off to make tankers harder to track and target.

Who wins, who pays?

Tanker owners clearly win when chokepoints get dangerous — risk premiums inflate spot rates, and Bahri's tenfold income jump is the proof. Charterers and refiners, particularly in Asia, absorb the higher freight bill, though ship-to-ship transfers outside Hormuz show buyers and sellers will engineer around geography when the price is right.

For forwarders and cargo interests outside crude, the signal is subtler: military-escorted convoying and darkened AIS are becoming normal operating practice in the Gulf, which raises insurance, scheduling and security costs across the board.

The operating environment remains, in the CEO's words, exceptionally complex. But with flows near pre-war levels and rates still elevated, Bahri's war-inflated earnings look set to hold while Hormuz stays contested.