IRAN’S HORMUZ BLOCKADE IS COLLAPSING AS GULF OIL FLOWS SURGE PAST PRE-WAR LEVELS
Iran’s effort to choke the Strait of Hormuz is failing in plain sight. Data from Kpler shows the Gulf exporting 24 million barrels a day in the week through October 18, higher than the 23.3 million barrels recorded before the war.
Traffic through the strait itself has recovered to 82 percent of normal volumes even as October brought roughly 30 ship attacks, about one-fifth of the war’s total. Saudi and Emirati pipelines are now moving 40 percent of the Gulf’s non-Iranian crude around the strait, up from just 17 percent in February. Iran’s own exports remain trapped by the U.S. blockade.
The workarounds are crude, costly, and working. Tankers load inside the Gulf with trackers off, run the strait under American air cover along the Omani coast, transfer cargo to other ships in the Gulf of Oman, and return for more. Crews receive three times their normal monthly pay or a flat $25,000 bonus for a single round trip.
Freight on a supertanker run to China has hit a record $37 a barrel. War-risk insurance has jumped from under 3 percent to 10 percent of hull value. One vessel struck by an RPG last week was carrying 2 million barrels of Iraqi crude.
U.S. Central Command stated last week that American forces control the strait and that Iranian claims of closure are false. The volume numbers confirm it.
The actual shortage Tehran hoped to create in April has evaporated. The price of that failure is still high: Brent crude sits at $108 a barrel and U.S. gasoline has reached $6 a gallon.
Sources: Wall Street Journal, Kpler, U.S. Central Command statements.