Vitol's operations severely affected as UAE blocks shipments from Port Sudan

Tensions between the United Arab Emirates and Sudan have disrupted the work of global energy and commodities company Vitol as it is unable to ship fuel from a main Sudanese port to the UAE.

Sudan's army-led government has accused the UAE of backing paramilitary forces in the country's brutal two-and-a-half-year war, something Abu Dhabi denies.

Khartoum severed diplomatic ties with the Gulf state in May this year when drones from the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces struck Port Sudan for the first time during the war. The Sudanese army partly blamed the UAE for the attack.

Since 7 August, the UAE has refused to accept any cargoes to and from Port Sudan because of the widening rift. This has disrupted the shipments of crude oil to Vitol – the world’s largest independent oil trader – preventing it from supplying its refinery in the Emirate of Fujairah, where the oil is processed into low-sulphur fuel for tankers, according to the Financial Times.

The crude, sourced from landlocked South Sudan, is typically transported through Port Sudan before reaching Vitol’s terminal for refining.

South Sudan produces about 149,000 barrels of crude a day, but a shutdown of the pipeline to Port Sudan had disrupted the trade even before the blockade, FT reported.

A significant portion of the crude oil is transported to Vitol’s terminal in Fujairah, where it is refined into bunker fuel, the type of low-sulphur fuel commonly used by tankers and other marine vessels.

The UAE hosts several such facilities near the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important shipping routes, and has become a regional hub for marine fuel production.

Vitol’s refinery in Fujairah relies on crude oil shipped from Port Sudan to produce this marine fuel. According to data from the analytics firm Kpler, Vitol has been the only consistent importer of Port Sudan crude into the UAE for at least the past year.

However, Kpler’s data shows that no shipments from South Sudan have reached the UAE since 30 July, leaving the refinery its main crude supply.