Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent posted a number late Thursday that commercial ship-tracking firms cannot match. He wrote on X that the United States had guided 130 million barrels of oil out over the previous 14 days, ending the post with "Iran: 0," and said the naval blockade of Iranian ports and the Operation Economic Outcast sanctions campaign would crush Iran's economy.
That works out to about 9.3 million barrels a day. Kpler, a ship-tracking firm, estimated the US moved a daily average of roughly 2.3 million barrels of crude and products in August. Huax put the range at two to five million. Vortexa found a seven-day average that peaked at 9.2 million — much closer to the administration's figures. The London Stock Exchange Group estimated Gulf loadings at about 1.9 million barrels a day, down from 4.4 million in July.
The gap is not new. Kpler counted 84 vessel transits through the Strait of Hormuz in a single week earlier this month, including nine on one Sunday, against more than 100 a day before the war. JPMorgan put outbound flows closer to four million barrels a day. Kpler's director of commodity research said the disparity between the tracked figures and the government's cannot be reconciled. On one Thursday in late August, Kpler logged seven commodity ships in the strait.
Both sides have reasons the counts might be low. Ships transfer cargo at sea and switch off transponders while passing through, so unofficial traffic may exceed the recorded numbers, according to Jefferies chief economist Mohit Kumar. Trackers rely on those transponders and on satellite imagery.
The scale of what has been lost is the part nobody disputes. About 20 million barrels a day — a quarter of global oil — moved through the strait during 2025.
Iran has answered the American numbers with its own framing rather than counter-data. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf told Bessent on X this week that his credibility was on the line, in a post about US spending on Israel and overseas bases. On Friday he reposted an older message setting out his position on oil: in a region where Iran cannot sell, no one else will sell either.US Central Command has offered figures of its own, saying American forces escorted nearly 1,500 commercial vessels through the strait over recent months carrying close to 750 million barrels, turned around 75 vessels attempting to run the blockade and disabled three.
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