DUBAIThe Trump administration says large volumes of oil are slipping through the Strait of Hormuz. The trackers whose job it is to count the world's oil shipments see much less.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said last week the U.S. military had helped ship over 15 million barrels of crude and oil products out of the waterway last Tuesday. He put the average oil exports through the strait over a seven-day period at more than 8 million barrels a day. Earlier this month, Wright said the seven-day average stood at around 9 million barrels a day.
The count from commercial ship trackers tells a different story, with estimates ranging from roughly 2 million to 6 million barrels a day. Industry figures on the amount of crude oil and oil products being loaded onto ships in the Persian Gulf and delivered to buyers don't corroborate the U.S. claims.
There are lots of reasons the numbers can diverge. Many ships are crossing the strait at night with their transponders off, making them hard to track by radio signal or satellite imagery. Big tankers can carry 2 million barrels apiece, so missing one or two can make all the difference. Measurement periods also make a big difference, as do assumptions about how full ships are when they cross.
Wright has said private data firms are undercounting ships that move covertly through the waterway. Still, a persistent gap remains between Washington's estimates and what the market can independently verify.
"What's remarkable is how similar tanker trackers' numbers are. You'd expect someone to have figured out a way to validate the White House numbers if there was a way," said Rory Johnston, founder of Commodity Context, an oil-market research firm. "As of yet, I haven't seen anyone do it."
"Commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz remained at reduced levels," UKMTO said in its report. "Independent tracking data indicated suppression with single-digit numbers transiting in both directions."
Satellites can help identify ships at berths in the Gulf and then in areas beyond the strait where ship-to-ship transfers occur. But satellite imagery just captures points in time and isn't great for tracking the chokepoint itself, as it misses the bulk of the movements at night, she said.
Detecting a ship doesn't settle how many barrels moved. Analysts need to establish whether it was laden with oil or sailing empty. A very large crude carrier, or VLCC, is capable of holding roughly 2 million barrels, but that doesn't mean it is full.
The U.S. military has wider sources of information given its active presence around the Gulf, advanced sensors and communications with ships in transit.
"I can't get to 10 million barrels a day from the vessel and cargo picture available to me," said Arsenio Longo, the founder of Huax. "The military may well be seeing vessels through radar, aircraft or other surveillance that commercial feeds miss."
There is another way to check: Oil can't move through the strait if it isn't first put on tankers somewhere in the Persian Gulf. Those figures also don't 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 so far in August. The data provider says 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, while Kuwait loaded 0.5 million, one-fifth of its prewar rate. Kuwaiti officials say they are exporting more, around 1 million barrels a day.
The ultimate check on Washington's numbers is whether the barrels ultimately surface somewhere. Even if tankers disappear while crossing Hormuz, much of that oil should eventually show up in data on barrels unloaded to buyers or middlemen.
So far, the U.S. government's claimed volumes aren't fully showing up in other countries' import volumes. According to LSEG data, an average of 11.6 million barrels per day of Middle Eastern crude and refined products have been or are scheduled to be discharged in Asia.
That number includes oil exports routed around Hormuz by pipeline, not just barrels escorted through the chokepoint.FREE LINK for my fellow Cal Bears!
https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/u-s-says-oil-is-pouring-through-hormuz-trackers-cant-find-it-306faebd?st=e6gcoq&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
