Iran says the Strait of Hormuz is closed, but the tanker traffic tells a murkier story. Even as Tehran maintains it has sealed off the waterway that…
Iran says the Strait of Hormuz is closed, but the tanker traffic tells a murkier story. Even as Tehran maintains it has sealed off the waterway that carries a fifth of the world's oil, U.S. officials are pointing to millions of barrels a day still slipping out of the Persian Gulf, some in plain sight and some running dark.
Nearly 9 million barrels a day still moving, U.S. says
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said Tuesday that the seven day average for oil departing the strait stood near 9 million barrels daily, a figure he credited to the U.S. military and Gulf allies keeping a protected corridor open. Add in another 5 million to 7 million barrels a day flowing through upgraded pipelines and export terminals that bypass the strait entirely, and total Gulf oil flows come to roughly 15 million barrels a day, according to Wright. That is down from about 20 million barrels a day before the conflict flared, but far from a shutdown. A separate U.S. official told Axios that around 8 million barrels are exiting the Gulf nightly through a southern lane hugging the Omani coast, aided by American naval escort.
Not every analyst buys those numbers at face value. Oil market researcher Rory Johnston put peak weekly volumes out of Hormuz closer to 7 million barrels a day, plus about 4 million barrels a day moving by pipeline, though he conceded the real total could run higher given how much traffic is now untraceable.
Dark tankers and ship to ship transfers keep crude moving
Since the ceasefire between Washington and Tehran broke down, publicly tracked ship transits through the strait have slowed to a trickle. But many vessels have simply switched off their transponders, a workaround known as going dark, and others are conducting ship to ship transfers off the Omani coast, a tactic Iran and Russia have both used before to dodge Western sanctions. A tanker exits the Gulf, offloads its cargo onto another ship at sea, then heads back through the strait to repeat the run. Not all of it goes unnoticed, which is part of why Iran keeps striking vessels even while insisting the strait is fully shut.
The pattern that is emerging looks less like a blockade of the Gulf and more like a blockade of Iran specifically. Iraq and other Gulf producers, which rely heavily on the strait, appear to be getting their barrels out through dark transits and transfers. Iranian crude, by contrast, is having a much harder time escaping.
