White House Hormuz Oil Claims Outpace Private Trackers — SkimNews
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- Trump claimed via Truth Social that 18 million barrels of oil per day are moving through the Strait of Hormuz, declaring "Hormuz Volumes are BACK" — the waterway handled 20 million barrels of crude and products daily before the Iran war.
- Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC that 17 million barrels of crude and products flowed through the strait on Monday, but separately acknowledged the multi-day rolling average is around 8 million barrels per day, per Bloomberg.
- Vortexa's 28-day moving average shows around 8 million barrels of crude and products as of August 31, while Tanker Trackers said its preliminary seven-day crude average is 5.94 million barrels per day — well below the White House's eye-popping single-day claims.
- Many tankers are going dark by turning off their automatic identification system transponders and using other tactics to move oil, making precise barrel counting a mix of "art and science" that complicates apples-to-apples comparisons during wartime.
- The Energy Department told Axios that nearly 12 million barrels moved through the strait on Wednesday, with a spokesperson saying the agency "maintains the best available data related to oil and oil products leaving the Arabian gulf" in coordination with the U.S. military.
- Eurasia Group analyst Gregory Brew said it does appear more oil is making it out — "but it's probably not as much as they are claiming" — enough to give Trump "the idea that time is on his side, and that the US has the upper hand over the Iranians."
- Rapidan Energy Group founder Bob McNally said the verdict will arrive in a few weeks: "If all that oil came out, it has to go somewhere and eventually it will be recorded," once tankers reach major importers and customs and stockpile data confirm outbound estimates.
Why it matters: Gasoline and consumer prices depend on how much oil truly exits the strait, and the gap between the administration's single-day claims of 17-18 million barrels and tracker averages of roughly 5-8 million barrels could decide whether Trump can credibly claim victory in the Iran conflict — and whether fall voters absorb the cost of a chokepoint that remains meaningfully restricted.
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