The Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC) has issued its eighth spot crude tender since June, trade sources told Reuters on Tuesday, as the United Arab Emirates — having recently exited OPEC — accelerates efforts to sell increased crude volumes into international markets.

Spot tenders allow producers to sell individual cargoes to the highest bidder outside of traditional long-term supply contracts, giving ADNOC flexibility to place barrels directly with refiners and traders in Europe and Asia who may not have standing term agreements with the Gulf producer.

In the latest tender, ADNOC is offering cargoes of the Upper Zakum, Umm Lulo, and Das crude grades for loading in October and November, according to Reuters' sources. While these crudes are produced within the Persian Gulf, ADNOC provides buyers with multiple logistics options. Purchasers can take cargoes on a free-on-board (FOB) basis at UAE facilities including Fujairah Storage, Zirku, and Das Island, or arrange ship-to-ship transfers at the Fujairah-Sohar range outside the Strait of Hormuz, or in Malaysia.

This follows a previous spot tender issued at the end of July, in which ADNOC sought to sell millions of barrels of crude for delivery between August and October, sourced from both within and outside the Persian Gulf.

Since early June, ADNOC is estimated to have sold more than 90 million barrels of crude through spot tenders. The company has operated a shuttle service to move crude onto tankers positioned outside the Strait of Hormuz, enabling exports despite disruptions at the key chokepoint, through which roughly a fifth of global daily oil consumption normally transits.

The UAE succeeded in restoring its oil exports to pre-crisis levels as early as June by continuously pushing crude both through and around the Strait of Hormuz.

The UAE formally left OPEC on May 1, ending a membership that had at times placed it at odds with the producer group over output policy. Since then, it has developed several workarounds to navigate the effective blockage at the Strait of Hormuz. These include shuttling crude through the chokepoint to transfer it onto larger vessels outside the Strait, maximizing use of its onshore pipeline to move crude from the west to the east of the country — thereby bypassing Hormuz — and operating tankers through the Strait in dark mode.

According to vessel-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg and reported last week, the UAE shipped more crude oil out of the Strait of Hormuz during June and July than any other Gulf producer.

The UAE is estimated to have produced 4.1 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil in June, marking the highest output level in the country's history. The sustained tender campaign signals that the UAE is positioning itself as a reliable supplier of incremental barrels to the global market at a time when competing Gulf producers remain constrained by export disruptions.

By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com