Ship-to-Ship Oil Transfers Surge Off India’s West Coast

The waters outside the Strait of Hormuz have been so overcrowded with ship-to-ship transfers to keep oil flowing out of the Persian Gulf that the STS operations are expanding into India’s West Coast. A total of 82 cargoes, or about 680,000 barrels per day (bpd), were transferred onto larger ships in the Indian Gulf of Kutch in September, according to vessel-tracking data by Vortexa cited by The National. The Gulf of Kutch, which opens towards the Arabian Sea facing the Gulf of Oman, has become another point of STS for the Gulf oil producers.…