Trump says renewed US campaign against Iran won’t last long

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright stated that more oil exports left the Middle East on Monday than before the Iran war began, but analytics firms disagree with his claim. The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow passage, and ships are using smaller and larger tankers in a process called ship-to-ship transfers, which can take days. Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, explained that Wright might be adding up transfers over multiple days into a single day, a method he jokingly called "mathemagics."

Wright's claim includes products, not just crude oil, and Saudi Arabia is exporting between 3 million to 4 million barrels daily via the Red Sea or the Suez Canal. Wright's statement suggests that traffic is back above pre-war levels, but Madani said that the seven-day average is 8.27 million barrels of oil exiting the Arabian Sea, which is still below pre-war volumes.

After the resumption of attacks on shipping, volumes fell to 6.81 million barrels on September 1 and 4.63 million barrels on September 2. Wright argued that Iran's blocking of the Strait of Hormuz was their "one card," but the U.S. military's efforts to clear shipping paths are slowly working. The White House defended Wright's remarks, emphasizing that the U.S. maintains the best available data on oil products transiting the Arabian Gulf.