The US naval blockade has kept Iranian crude exports at zero in October, having plummeted in the second week of September, Reuters reports citing energy intelligence platform Vortexa.
According to a report from the firm, oil flows from the Gulf excluding Iran surged to over 81 per cent of pre-war levels in September, led by a recovery in Saudi exports.
Iran’s seaborne crude exports fell to zero in the second week of September from a 14-day average of 230,000 barrels per day at the start of that month, and have stayed there as of October 5, Vortexa adds.
Meanwhile, Iranian crude in tankers on the water has fallen to 83 million barrels, with 43 million barrels trapped west of the Strait of Hormuz due to the US blockade.
“The blockade is doing what years of sanctions never managed: it has physically stopped Iranian crude from leaving the Gulf,” Claire Jungman, Vortexa’s director of maritime risk and intelligence, says, adding that China also no longer needs Iranian barrels as urgently as it did before because Russian crude has filled the gap.
