Nagham Hassan, Market Analyst, etoro
Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates – August, 2026: Investors had been waiting for energy companies to report Q2 results to find out how much the Strait of Hormuz disruption actually cost the sector. The answer, it turns out, varies depending on what the company does.
The exporters took the damage
ADNOC Gas kept its plants running at 99.9% availability while they operated at just 54.1% of capacity. This is the kind of gap you get when a company can make its product but cannot move it, as about 30% of its volumes travel through the Strait. Q2 revenue fell 39% to USD 3,624 million year-on-year and net profit fell 52% to USD 665 million. Its Habshan complex also suffered physical damage in April, booking a USD 66 million write-off against an insurance claim that is still open.
Petrochemicals maker Borouge got a good price for everything it sold; the problem was it simply could not make enough. Q2 production fell 24% as its plants ran at 60% utilisation, starved of the raw material one of its big units needs. Rerouting product by road, rail and other sea routes pushed shipping costs to USD 150.6 million from USD 24.2 million, and half year profit fell 27%.
Shipping and retail fuel got paid
ADNOC Logistics and Services came out on top amid the disruption, as it owns the vessels everyone suddenly needed. Charter rates climbed, Q2 net profit rose 303% year-on-year to USD 951 million, on revenue of USD 2,584 million, and it raised its full year forecast for the third time this year.
Higher pump prices nearly doubled ADNOC Distribution’s second quarter profit to AED 1.32 billion year-on-year, while the volume of fuel it actually sold rose only about 1%. Most of the gain came from selling fuel bought earlier at lower cost into higher prices. On the company’s own underlying measure, growth was 5%.
The contractor and domestic utilities never noticed
By contrast, though part of the energy industry, ADNOC Drilling rents out its rigs on long-term contracts rather than selling oil, so its rates are fixed years ahead and a swing in crude does not move its revenue. Second quarter profit rose 2% year-on-year to USD 359 million on revenue of USD 1.23 billion.
Despite primarily being a gas company, TAQA actually pumps oil and gas in Canada, the UK and the Netherlands, and only supplies regulated water and power inside the UAE. Therefore, they were unscathed and second quarter profit even rose 21.7% to AED 1,980 million compared to a year ago. DEWA tells the same story from Dubai, with record half year profit up 15% to AED 3.33 billion on demand for electricity, water and cooling.
Storage had geography on its side
Etihad Energy Holding offers another example of how exposure depended on where assets sat. Its oil storage tanks are in Fujairah, on the open sea beyond the Strait, insulating the business from the bottleneck that hit exporters elsewhere. Half year rental income rose 15% to AED 149.4 million and the storage business earned AED 41.3 million. The filings do not disclose occupancy, so it is impossible to say whether the disruption brought more barrels into its tanks, but the numbers at least show that one important part of the UAE’s storage infrastructure kept growing through it.
One company had a different problem
Dana Gas has its fields onshore in Iraqi Kurdistan and Egypt and sells its gas locally, so no shipping route touches it, and it was shielded from Hormuz disruptions. However, it came head-to-head with the war as a drone attacked its gas field in Khor Mor, halting production from 28 February until April. Half year profit still rose 47% to USD 107 million compared to H1 last year, but strip out a one-off billing settlement of USD 48 million, and profit actually fell 19%.
Putting it together
Oil and gas prices were high through the disruption, so the companies who sell them got paid well for whatever they managed to sell. The challenge was moving goods in and out of the country. ADNOC Gas and Borouge both ran their plants below capacity because cargoes could not sail and raw material could not arrive, and shipping cost increased for both.
The companies further along the supply chain had an easier quarter. ADNOC L&S benefited from rising shipping rates, while the storage tank business at Fujairah kept growing. Electricity and water demand inside the UAE grew without being affected by what was going on at sea. Fuel retail grew due to higher pump prices rather than an increase in demand.
What happens next
The earnings do not show any fundamental problems at the companies that struggled. ADNOC Gas ran its plants at 99.9% availability and Borouge sold everything it could make at prices 45% higher than a year earlier. Neither lost customers or faced weaker demand. They lost the ability to move goods, which is a problem that reverses the moment ships sail freely, and that is clearly stated in what both told the market about the second half. ADNOC Gas has kept its full year target only by assuming normal conditions return in the fourth quarter, and Borouge ties its second half output to free movement through the Strait. The reversal cuts the other way for ADNOC L&S, whose increased profit came from the disruption itself. Tanker rates climbed because shipping became risky, and they have already fallen back by roughly a third as that risk eased. Inside the UAE, the clearest sign of all this is at the pump, where higher fuel prices are now feeding into household and business costs.
