Many treat a transit trade as a mere bill-of-lading swap. The margin actually erodes at the lightering leg. Sohar and Fujairah sit outside the Hormuz congestion and close to load ports; lightering skips pilotage and port calls, but it stacks a two-vessel rendezvous, a weather window and barge hire. Slip any one and the schedule drifts.

Run the numbers: a VLCC lightered at anchor ideally discharges in 3 to 4 days. Hit sustained winds above Beaufort 6 or a clashing barge slot and it stretches to 6 to 7 days, where demurrage alone runs five figures per day under the charter. For an offshore supplier running back-to-back LCs like SNSUC, one slipped day tightens the presentation window by one day.

So the play is not 'who is cheapest' but treating the lightering window as the scheduling core: lock barge and alongside slots early, align the load-port ETA with the anchorage weather window, and accept a thinner freight to protect on-time presentation. The rule that fixes the discharge port as STS before the LC opens is not a constraint — it is the certainty left for scheduling.

In reverse, Fujairah's free-port status makes product commingling and temporary storage more flexible, suiting a transit buffer; Sohar hugs the Oman load port for faster short-haul transshipment. Splitting volume across both lines by rhythm beats betting on a single point.