Saudi Arabia has sold as many as 20 million barrels of crude oil in the spot market this week, to be picked up from just outside the Strait of Hormuz for this month and next via ship-to-ship (STS) transfers. This follows the forced shutdown of its key East-West onshore pipeline late last week due to drone attacks. Chinese and other East Asian refiners have been the main buyers of these spot offerings. The pipeline outage has also reportedly led to cancellations or delays of some September deliveries to European refiners.