UAE, Kuwait Boost Naphtha Exports to Asia via Ship-to-Ship Transfers Outside Hormuz

The shift to ship-to-ship transfers outside Hormuz is a logistics workaround that effectively redraws the risk map for Gulf petrochemical flows: it lets producers keep Asian buyers supplied without routing through the chokepoint that disrupted volumes earlier in the year. The near-doubling from the March–April trough shows how quickly the workaround scaled, and it matters most for Asian naphtha crackers that depend on Gulf feedstock. Whether this routing becomes permanent infrastructure or unwinds if Hormuz risk eases is the open question, along with whether other Gulf exporters copy the model.