The crisis-driven dislocation across Gulf oil markets has positioned French energy giant TotalEnergies SE as an early mover, capitalizing on heavily discounted Persian Gulf crude priced at $50 to $60 a barrel and moving it through the highly contested Strait of Hormuz. CEO Patrick Pouyanné revealed at the Norwegian energy conference on Monday that transiting the waterway now costs roughly $20 million per supertanker.
Bloomberg earlier quoted Pouyanné as saying that the added cost of moving crude on supertankers through the Hormuz chokepoint is about $10 per barrel. However, with Brent crude futures at $92 per barrel, the potential profit could be upward of $30 per barrel. That is before financing and other costs, creating extraordinary margins for companies willing to accept the risks of being early movers in one of the world's most dangerous waterways.
TotalEnergies is one of the largest traders of Iraqi and Qatari crude, with both producers continuing to move oil through the Strait of Hormuz.
"We are today probably the largest trader of oil from Iraq or from Qatar ... and I can tell you that today crude oil is moving through the Strait of Hormuz very quietly, not publicly," Pouyanné said.
Pouyanné did not elaborate on whether TotalEnergies-contracted tankers are transiting the US military-supervised shipping corridor off Oman.
Recent data have shown a noticeable uptick in transits, raising the question of whether Tehran's grip on the maritime chokepoint has eroded.
Pouyanné also warned that the refined-products market is currently in crisis.
"You have a bearish crude oil market and a very bullish product markets, which is very strange," he said. "Our consumers in Europe will suffer on this one," while in the US, "gasoline prices would not go lower than $4 as President Trump would like."
More on Pouyanne from Bloomberg's Javier Blas:
Gulf producers are willing to unload discounted crude, while some energy companies are ready to accept the risk of sailing through the Strait of Hormuz in pursuit of substantial profits. Despite all this, as Pouyanné warned, there is little that increased crude flows can do to resolve the worldwide refined-products crisis.