Oil Giant's Profits Surge 25%

Saudi Aramco's earnings jumped 25% in the first quarter as the company shifted more crude through a major domestic pipeline to work around war-related disruptions at a key shipping chokepoint. The Saudi Arabia-controlled producer on Sunday reported net income of $32.5 billion for the quarter ending March 31, up from $26 billion a year earlier, the Wall Street Journal reports. The gain came as global oil prices rose following the effective shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz after war broke out on Feb. 28 between Iran and the US and its regional partners. Before the conflict, roughly 20% of the world's oil and gas moved through the narrow passage each day.

To lessen the impact of the bottleneck, Aramco increased flows through its East-West pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, reaching full capacity of 7 million barrels per day during the quarter. The pipeline, however, cannot fully substitute for tanker traffic through Hormuz, limiting how much of the higher prices producers can capture until the waterway reopens. The Iranian blockade of the strait has led to the loss of nearly a billion barrels of oil, per CNBC, a figure that is growing. Aramco is the world's largest oil company, per the AP.