Tanker Data Contradicts US Claim That Middle East Oil Flows Have Normalized

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com

Oil flows from the Middle East have normalized, with Sunday traffic alone above pre-conflict averages, US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said on Tuesday in a claim that appears not to be backed by ship-tracking data.

On Tuesday, Secretary Wright posted on X that “Thanks to the coordinated efforts of the U.S. military and our gulf allies, the seven-day average for oil leaving the Strait of Hormuz is currently up to almost 9 million barrels per day.”

Thanks to the coordinated efforts of the U.S. military and our gulf allies, the seven-day average for oil leaving the Strait of Hormuz is currently up to almost 9 million barrels per day.

When combined with the additional 5-7 million barrels per day leaving the region via newly…

— Secretary Chris Wright (@SecretaryWright) August 11, 2026

He went on to add that “When combined with the additional 5-7 million barrels per day leaving the region via newly upgraded pipelines and export facilities, total oil flows are currently averaging approximately 15 million barrels per day.”  

According to the top US energy official, “On Sunday alone, over 20 million barrels left the Arabian gulf region, which is above the pre-conflict average.”

However, analysts and tanker traffic monitoring services cannot fathom how the U.S. Administration has arrived at these numbers, considering that traffic at the Strait of Hormuz is severely constrained, even according to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA).

“We have increased our estimates of Middle East shut-in crude oil production in the coming months compared with our July forecast due to continued severe constraints on Strait of Hormuz transits, which we assume persist through August,” the EIA said on Tuesday in its latest monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO).

“It is not possible to reconcile the disparity between what we see and what he is quoting,” Matt Smith, director of commodity research at Kpler, told CNN, commenting on Wright’s claim.

Kpler data showed earlier this week that vessel traffic at the Strait of Hormuz continues to decline as last week’s hopes of negotiations of a U.S.-Iran deal began to fade, yet again.  

On Monday, only six commodity vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz in either direction, down from 11 ships in the latest 10-day average, according to shipping data from Kpler cited by Reuters on Tuesday. The number down to just 1 on Wednesday.