Hormuz Shipping Tycoon Capitalizes on Critical Strait Trade Routes
UAE's Secret Oil Exports Revealed: Sinokor Group at the Helm
Just weeks into the war in the Persian Gulf, the United Arab Emirates quietly began sneaking its crude oil out of the Strait of Hormuz. The covert project, which relied on tactics associated with sanctioned countries like Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, became so successful that the UAE was approaching its pre-war rate of flows through the waterway by the time the US and Iran signed their interim peace deal.
The UAE's aggressive push to get barrels safely out of the strait relied on a sufficient number of ships to make the risky transit, not just once, but over and over. For that, officials in Abu Dhabi turned to Ga-Hyun Chung, the intensely private Korean shipping tycoon. His Sinokor Group embarked on an unprecedented buying spree early this year, which made it one of the big winners from the turmoil in the oil trade from the Iran war.
According to ship tracking data collected by analytics firm Vortexa, almost half of Emirati crude shipments were sailing on vessels controlled by Sinokor by June. This story is based on vessel tracking data compiled by Bloomberg, figures from Vortexa and Kpler, another leading analytics firm, and conversations with more than a dozen shipbrokers, traders, and other industry insiders.
