Thirty days is the figure to build the model around. Cryptobriefing.com reports that tankers bound for Asia, which used to run south through the Bab el-Mandeb and across the Indian Ocean, now go around the Cape of Good Hope, adding over 30 days to delivery schedules [9]; every million barrels a day sent that way parks roughly 30 million barrels on the water at any moment (30 days times 1 MMbpd) [1], which is inventory a refiner or a trading desk finances and insures before a single barrel reaches a still.
The case for treating this as a standing cost rather than a headline sits in the sequence, not the size. Hormuz, which the same report says had historically carried over 6 MMbpd of Saudi crude, was effectively shut in March 2026 [2]; the East-West line to Yanbu took the load, peaking near 5 MMbpd [3] against a nominal 7 [4], covering about five-sixths of the lost corridor [3]. Then relief came, and it was real: an interim US-Iran deal pulled Yanbu loadings down to roughly 2.39 MMbpd by June [5], a fall of about 2.6 MMbpd, or 52 per cent, from the March peak [2]. Whoever sold the freight premium into that won the trade, and had something like seven weeks to bank it before the 20 July embargo on Saudi shipping [6][5]. The reversion did happen, quickly, and was undone more quickly still.
Meanwhile the spare capacity is being spent. Ain Sukhna went to about 1.1 MMbpd, a third above the roughly 0.83 it had been taking [7][6], and SUMED itself ran above 1.9 MMbpd in August from under 0.65 two months earlier, close to a tripling [8][4], with the report placing that level near operational limits [10]. Aramco's revealed allocation is worth naming: with the pipe nameplated at 7 and Yanbu loading 2.39 in June [4][5], the binding constraint was never the steel, it was the water past the terminal, so the kingdom is buying Mediterranean exit through Egypt instead of filling its own line.
What the source does not do is price any of this, giving no charter rate and no war-risk premium, hence no dollars per barrel [7]. So the honest thesis is a shape rather than a number, and it is probably wrong in at least one of three directions. A second diplomatic outcome restores Bab el-Mandeb transit and the premium decays the way it did in June, which is the strongest counter and the one the source's own data supports. Or SUMED's ceiling holds, every incremental barrel goes long-haul, and the Cape voyage becomes the marginal route and therefore the price. Or reserve draws in Japan, South Korea and China absorb the cost for two or three quarters until the buffers need refilling, which the source calls a stopgap rather than a strategy [12]. Given that a producer of roughly one in every ten barrels consumed worldwide [11] has lost two exits since March [2][6], I would put the extra voyage days in the base case and treat their removal as upside.
What would prove me wrong is specific and cheap to monitor: Yanbu loadings back above 4 MMbpd with Bab el-Mandeb transits resuming, which is the June pattern repeating rather than a new equilibrium.
