Wright cites over 8 million barrels daily; trackers estimate 2-6 million
A persistent gap has opened between the Trump administration’s stated oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz and what commercial ship trackers can independently verify.
U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said last week the U.S. military had helped ship over 15 million barrels of crude and oil products through the strait on a single Tuesday. He put the seven-day average of oil exports at more than 8 million barrels a day. Earlier this month, Wright said the seven-day figure stood at around 9 million barrels daily.
The figures from commercial ship trackers tell a different story, with estimates ranging from roughly 2 million to 6 million barrels a day. Kpler, a ship-tracking firm, estimates that exports of crude and oil products through Hormuz have run at about 2.3 million barrels a day so far in August, down from 4.9 million barrels a day in July. Huax, another tracker, puts the current range for crude and refined products at 2 million to 5 million barrels a day. Vortexa’s seven-day average recently peaked at 9.2 million barrels a day, but its 28-day moving average, which the company says is more representative because it smooths out short-term spikes and volatility, remains around 6 million barrels a day, underscoring how measurement windows shape the picture.
Rory Johnston, founder of oil-market research firm Commodity Context, put his latest seven-day average of confirmed transits at about 4 million barrels a day, though he expects that to be revised up to 5 million to 6 million as ships that crossed with their transponders off turn their AIS back on after clearing the strait and their voyages can be reconstructed.
The biggest obstacle for trackers is that many tankers are going dark. Ships normally broadcast their identity, position, speed, and direction through AIS transponders, but with many vessels switching off their AIS before crossing Hormuz, analysts have to reconstruct voyages using satellite imagery and other clues. “So many ships are transiting dark, which makes it difficult to tally total tanker movements in real time,” said Bridget Diakun, maritime intelligence and research director at Lloyd’s List Intelligence. “We are partially waiting for AIS to come back on, but we also need to wait for satellite imagery to be available to validate sailings through Hormuz.”
“What’s remarkable is how similar tanker trackers’ numbers are,” Johnston said. “You’d expect someone to have figured out a way to validate the White House numbers if there was a way. As of yet, I haven’t seen anyone do it.” Arsenio Longo, founder of Huax, said: “I can’t get to 10 million barrels a day from the vessel and cargo picture available to me. The military may well be seeing vessels through radar, aircraft or other surveillance that commercial feeds miss.”
There is another check. Oil cannot move through the strait if it is not first loaded onto tankers somewhere in the Persian Gulf, and those figures also do not line up with the U.S. transit claims. LSEG puts crude and product loadings inside the Persian Gulf at about 4.4 million barrels a day in July and 1.9 million barrels a day so far in August. Iraq, which lacks a major bypass route, loaded just 1.1 million barrels a day so far this month, less than a third of prewar levels, according to LSEG, while Kuwait loaded 0.5 million barrels a day, one-fifth of its prewar rate. Kuwaiti officials said they are exporting more, around 1 million barrels a day.
The United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have managed to route millions of barrels a day around the blockade by piping oil across the desert to the Gulf of Oman or the Red Sea. Ship trackers said roughly a third of the vessels that have transited the strait during August used an Iranian-administered route along the northern reaches of the waterway. Kuwaiti, Iraqi, and Emirati officials said some tankers are getting through under separate arrangements with Iran, meaning not all of the traffic is moving under U.S. protection.
A report over the weekend from the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations, which is affiliated with the Royal Navy, cited U.S. Navy data saying the United States facilitated 74 transits through Hormuz from Thursday through Saturday, or around 25 transits a day on average. The numbers do not specify how many were oil tankers or how many barrels they carried. UKMTO itself said commercial traffic “remained at reduced levels” and that “independent tracking data indicated suppression with single-digit numbers transiting in both directions.”
Iran attacked ships using the U.S.-protected route along the Omani side of the strait in July, ending an earlier agreement to reopen the waterway. Mohsen Rezaei, a top Iranian official, said late Sunday that the bypass routes used by the UAE and Saudi Arabia would be threatened if the U.S. continues its campaign of squeezing Iran’s economy.
Markets have so far remained relatively calm. Benchmark Brent crude futures traded around $90 a barrel, well off wartime highs. Dubai crude futures, for oil that flows out of the Gulf, came down from $160 a barrel in late March to around $97 a barrel on Friday, according to Argus Media, a price-reporting agency. The spread between physical-market cargoes and Brent futures, once as large as $36 a barrel, has narrowed to less than $6.
The Wall Street Journal described the U.S.-Iran confrontation as an economic contest in which oil serves as a key lever. The U.S. Navy has for months successfully guided some tankers through a protected route along the Omani side, a move the paper described as eroding Iran’s control and easing pressure on global oil markets. The persistence of a gap between Washington’s figures and what the market can independently verify leaves the central question of how much oil is actually flowing unresolved.