Saudi Aramco has offered additional spot crude cargoes to European refiners for late-October and November loading, a sign that the kingdom's oil exports are recovering after an attack on its East-West pipeline disrupted shipments.

Trackers disagree on the true export level

The October cargoes, available from the Red Sea port of Yanbu or from Sidi Kerir in Egypt, were offered at a discount to Aramco's official selling prices, according to market reports. Following the pipeline's restart, Aramco also restored full November term-contract allocations for European refiners. Saudi Arabia typically exports 700,000 to 800,000 barrels per day to Europe.

The move follows months in which war-related disruption forced Aramco to reroute exports away from the Gulf. Shipments through Ras Tanura came to a complete halt in April and May, prompting Yanbu to handle all Saudi oil shipments, with loadings there peaking in June at 4.29 million barrels per day.

How much Saudi crude is actually reaching buyers remains uncertain. Three independent tracking services produced materially different October estimates, Rigzone reported: Vortexa put shipments at 6.5 million barrels per day, TankerTrackers at 6.99 million and Kpler at 5.4 million. Part of the gap is attributed to tankers switching off satellite transponders to avoid attack, so-called dark shipping, which makes tracking inherently imprecise.

Even the highest estimate sits well below Saudi Arabia's OPEC+ November production target of 10.5 million barrels per day. Red Sea loadings via Yanbu reached about 2.5 million barrels per day in October on a month-to-date basis, according to Vortexa data cited by Rigzone, up slightly from 2.4 million in September.

For European refiners, the discounted spot cargoes offer some relief after months of tight supply. But with the kingdom's export routes still exposed to the wider regional conflict, traders are watching whether the recovery in loadings holds into November.

Sources: OilPrice (Bloomberg), TankTerminals (Reuters/Yahoo Finance).