Tehran's tankers sail on
The Strait of Hormuz is shut. Unless you fly an Iranian flag.
Since the U.S. and Israel launched strikes against Iran on February 28, Tehran has moved at least 11.7 million barrels of crude oil through the very waterway it has threatened to close permanently, according to vessel-tracking data from TankerTrackers.com. Every barrel went to China.
Meanwhile, tanker traffic from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait and the UAE has collapsed. Only one commercial vessel crossed the strait on March 9, and it was Iranian-flagged, according to maritime intelligence firm Windward. The seven-day average stood at just 4.14 crossings, a fraction of normal flow.
Brent crude traded at $92.03 per barrel on Tuesday, up 4.85%. WTI crude rose to $87.33, gaining 4.24%.
A blockade with a back door
Before the war, Iran was already shipping record volumes. Exports hit 2.16 million barrels per day in February, the highest since July 2018, according to commodity data provider Kpler. All of it was bound for Chinese independent and state-linked refiners building up strategic buffers against exactly this kind of disruption.
That flow has slowed but not stopped. Current shipments run at roughly 1.22 million barrels per day, Kpler data shows. Iran's foreign ministry offered little reassurance to other shippers. Tankers passing through the strait "must be very careful," a ministry spokesman told CNBC on Monday.
The double standard is hard to miss. While Iran's own crude moves freely, Saudi Arabia has slashed its Hormuz shipments to 4.06 million barrels per day, down 39% from 6.64 million before the conflict. Iraq took an even harder hit. Production crashed from 4.3 million barrels per day to around 1.3 million, with exports dropping by at least 800,000 barrels daily, according to Windward's maritime intelligence reports.
Jask: the backup nobody talks about
There is another twist. Satellite imagery shows Iran quietly loading a Very Large Crude Carrier at the Jask oil terminal on the Gulf of Oman, south of the strait entirely. The 2-million-barrel shipment marks only the fifth loading at Jask in five years, TankerTrackers reported.
The terminal bypasses the Hormuz chokepoint altogether, but it has serious limits. Loading a VLCC at Jask takes up to 10 days compared with one or two at Iran's main export hub on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf. That makes Jask a lifeline, not a replacement.
Still, the fact that Tehran is activating backup infrastructure while its own tankers cruise through the "closed" strait underscores how selectively the blockade operates.
Beijing's quiet insurance policy
China saw this coming. In the weeks before the conflict, Chinese refiners stockpiled crude at an accelerated pace, pulling in Iranian barrels at record rates. That pre-war buying spree now looks less like routine procurement and more like advance planning.
Beijing has also pressed Tehran to keep the strait open, according to reporting from Iran International. China is Iran's only remaining major crude buyer, and that leverage cuts both ways. Tehran needs the revenue, but Beijing needs stable supply.
The arrangement has held so far. But it raises a question the rest of the market is asking: if Iranian crude can transit the Strait of Hormuz, why can't everyone else's?
What traders are watching
The IEA announced Tuesday that its 32 member nations will release 400 million barrels from strategic reserves, the largest coordinated drawdown in history. The move is designed to offset the roughly 15 million barrels already removed from global supply by the Hormuz disruption.
Whether reserves can fill the gap depends on how long the blockade lasts. Rystad Energy vice president Janiv Shah has warned Brent could hit $135 per barrel if the current standoff stretches another four months. Iran's IRGC has gone further, promising "not a litre of oil" will pass through the strait. A threat that apparently does not apply to Iran's own fleet.