The U.S. blockade on Iranian oil exports has so far stranded at least 50 Iranian tankers laden with oil inside the Persian Gulf near Iran’s coastline, U.S.-based non-profit and non-partisan policy organization United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI) said in its latest shipping update this week.
After the collapse of the ‘deal to make a deal’, the U.S. Navy reinstated in mid-July the blockade in the Gulf of Oman outside the Strait of Hormuz to force Iran’s oil exports to zero and gain leverage in negotiations.
As of early October, UANI has identified at least 50 tankers laden with Iranian oil—primarily crude, but also other petroleum products and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)—currently operating along the Iranian coastline.
A cluster of as many as 16 laden tankers remain near Kharg Island, Iran’s key oil export terminal in the Gulf, according to the non-profit. A total of 11 laden tankers are anchored east of Kharg, while an extra five tankers are located further south of the island.
Since the U.S. reinstated the maritime blockade on July 14, UANI has tracked at least 39 Iranian oil and petrochemical loadings, eight of which originated from Kharg Island.
But these have not been able to break the U.S. blockade.
At the same time, “Iran-flagged tankers, empty after conducting STS transfers, are now loitering at anchorages across the Indo-Pacific rather than transiting back to Iranian ports because of the U.S. blockade,” the non-profit said.
Publicly, Iran remains defiant and claims it will find ways to dodge the U.S. blockade.
But vessel-tracking services have estimated that Iran’s oil exports plunged in August compared with a year earlier.
Crude oil loadings in Iran were just 250,000 barrels per day (bpd) in August, but loadings in September were zero, for the first time since the war began, preliminary tanker-tracking estimates compiled by Bloomberg showed earlier this month.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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