Singapore – Just a few weeks into the war, one of the Persian Gulf’s top oil producers quietly began sneaking its crude out of the Strait of Hormuz. Before long, the covert project became so successful that the United Arab Emirates was already approaching its pre-war rate of flows through the waterway by the time the US and Iran signed their interim peace deal.
Crucially though, officials in Abu Dhabi needed enough ships to make the risky transit – not just once, but over and over. And for that they turned for help to Chung Ga-Hyun.
The intensely private Korean shipping tycoon rocked the tanker industry early in 2026 as his Sinokor Group embarked on an unprecedented buying spree. Bloomberg reported in March that he stood to be one of big winners from the turmoil in the oil trade from the Iran war, as rates for tankers surged.
Now, Sinokor has emerged as a major owner of supertankers moving crude out of the Persian Gulf.
The company started leasing ships to Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (Adnoc) for its “shuttle runs” from at least mid-April. By June, almost half of Emirati crude shipments were sailing on vessels controlled by Sinokor, according to ship tracking data collected by analytics firm Vortexa.
This story is based on vessel tracking data compiled by Bloomberg, figures from Vortexa and Kpler, another leading analytics firm, and conversations with more than a dozen shipbrokers, traders and other industry insiders. The scale of Sinokor’s role in leasing ships for “dark” transits has not previously been reported.
While Adnoc also relied on tankers it owned directly, as well as from other owners, the deals with Sinokor were key to helping the UAE ramp up exports through Hormuz far faster than its Gulf neighbors.
But the deals have also created a huge profit opportunity for Sinokor, Chung and his new co-owner, Italian container giant MSC Group. Oil tanker markets are having one of the most lucrative years ever, and shipbrokers suggest that the premium for sailing into the Gulf during the war could have yielded three to four times the prewar rate.
The terms of the deals haven’t been disclosed, but the brokers estimated just three tankers doing shuttle runs since mid-April could have earned Sinokor somewhere around US$60 million to US$120 million.
Since the interim ceasefire between the United States and Iran came into effect, Sinokor has sent a further stream of supertankers into the Persian Gulf ready to collect crude – including at least two that have already returned again after exiting to offload their cargoes. And it’s not just UAE cargoes; the company has been active in touting its services to shipbrokers as it looks to pick up barrels from elsewhere in the gulf.
“Sinokor’s moves during the Iran war are groundbreaking,” said Matt Wright, Kpler’s principal freight analyst. “By creating an environment that supports their negotiating position they are lifting rates for all owners. They are also willing to go to corners of the market where shipowners might still be cautious about, and we are seeing initial signs of a market recovery because of that.”
Even in an industry dominated by larger-than-life characters, Chung’s bold bets have set him apart.
Sinokor, which is headquartered in Seoul, started out as a container shipper, before expanding to become a smaller player in oil tankers. That changed dramatically late in 2025, when the company suddenly went on a dealmaking spree to buy and charter supertankers with backing from one of shipping’s biggest players, MSC.
By late February, Sinokor controlled about 150 very large crude carriers, according to industry estimates – nearly 40 per cent of the global fleet that wasn’t either sanctioned or tied up on long-term leases or regular routes.
After the US issued licences allowing the trade in Venezuelan oil at the beginning of 2026, Sinokor deployed several of its vessels toward the US Gulf and the Caribbean in anticipation of the flood of barrels entering the mainstream market. At one point, the company controlled nearly all of the available supertankers that could reach the US Gulf within 30 days.
Bloomberg reported in March that Sinokor itself had moved at least six empty supertankers into the Gulf in the weeks before the war, which meant the company was able to hire the vessels out at eye-popping daily rates to hold oil, as storage in the region filled up. (Around the same time time, more details of the company’s tie up with MSC became public – the world’s biggest container line had actually bought a 50 per cent stake in Sinokor Maritime Co.)
On average, Sinokor ships have transported at least 680,000 barrels a day of supplies from the UAE’s Persian Gulf ports since April, based on loadings that have been detected by both the Kpler and Vortexa platforms – though the actual figures could be far higher. Those numbers accelerated in June to 1.4 million barrels a day, the data show. At least 10 Sinokor vessels have been engaged in shuttle runs from the UAE’s oil terminals inside the Persian Gulf before discharging in the Gulf of Oman, and three of the shuttling ships have been doing so since the middle of April.
Carrying such large volumes at a time when tanker earnings have been so high has been highly lucrative for the company, and would have already gone some way to paying back a multibillion-dollar bet on supertankers.
It also puts Chung and Sinokor among some of the biggest winners of the shock to energy markets from the Iran war, alongside other large tanker owners, as well as energy traders such as Vitol Group and Trafigura Group, which tend to thrive during times of disruption and volatility.
Freight rates have dropped after an initial surge following the peace deal, as it becomes more apparent that more ships are entering the Gulf, but still remain high by historical standards.
Sinokor, again, continues to play a key role. In the last week alone the company has sent at least 18 supertankers into the Gulf, enough to carry 36 million barrels of crude out of the world’s most important energy producing region.
“We can pass Hormuz Strait after loading,” Sinokor said in a message distributed to shipbrokers in late June, in which it urged brokers to book the company’s ships to load from an Iraqi oil terminal, adding: “Please let us know if you have any cargoes available.” BLOOMBERG
