Middle East Crude Exports Top Pre-Conflict Levels Amid Maritime Threats

A projectile struck the very large crude carrier Kazimah III while it was operating in the Strait of Hormuz on October 1. Fire broke out on board. The crew was reported safe and evacuated from the vessel, with no casualties. The ship’s owner, Kuwait Oil Tanker Company, did not respond to requests for comment.

Martin Kelly, a senior intelligence analyst at EOS Risk Group, described the American role over these waters as “air support to ships”—warnings and intercepts that form the thin cover merchant vessels steam under as they push through. The strait itself runs roughly 104 miles between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, narrowing at points to about 24 miles, the only sea passage from the Gulf to open ocean. Before the conflict it typically handled some 125 large commercial vessels a day and carried about a fifth of the world’s crude oil and liquefied natural gas supply.

The cover remains thin. Hulls are still moving through a live-fire lane.

The Liberian-flagged Aframax tanker Lipsi was struck by an unknown projectile on October 4 while transiting approximately 3.9 nautical miles northeast of Jazirat Um Al Fayarin, Oman, in the Strait of Hormuz. The strike damaged the engine room. The crew was reported safe, with no casualties. Dynacom, its manager, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Marisks, a shipping intelligence service, reported at least seven incidents in the past week. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency has logged at least one attack a day in the Strait of Hormuz or the Gulf of Aden since October 2. The pattern now runs through the narrows and the approaches beyond them.

Merchant vessels transiting the strait face a “heightened and increasingly unpredictable kinetic threat” given the recent sharp increase in traffic, Marisks said. Projectiles keep finding tankers. The volume of ships moving through those same waters has risen.

Provisional figures from the maritime tracker Kpler put the rebound in plain numbers. “At least 16.5 mbd (million barrels a day) left the region between 1 and 28 September, matching the pre-war average excluding Iran. That is 10.5 mbd above March’s monthly average,” the firm said. In the twelve months before the conflict began, crude exports from the region had averaged about 18 million barrels a day.

Those cargoes topped the pre-war mark on 14 days in September. In the final week they cleared it on four of seven days—September 24 and September 27 through 29. Kpler’s seven-day moving average stood at 18.3 million barrels a day on September 30 and 18.5 million on October 1. Vortexa’s 14-day moving average reached 18.6 million barrels a day, above the 10-year seasonal average.

“Most of this month-over-month increase seen in September comes from Saudi Arabia, which is ramping up exports to regain market share from other Middle Eastern countries,” said Xavier Tang, a senior market analyst at Vortexa. The barrels were leaving. The map that carried them had already been redrawn.

Forty percent of the region’s crude now leaves without crossing the Strait of Hormuz. Before the war the share was seventeen percent. Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline connects the main oil fields in the east to the Red Sea terminal at Yanbu, a route that never enters the strait. Strikes launched from Iraq on September 11 forced the line shut. It stayed down until September 22, Kpler analyst Amena Bakr said. When it reopened, Saudi loadings from both the Red Sea and the Gulf picked up again. The United Arab Emirates moves crude from Abu Dhabi’s fields through a pipeline to Fujairah, on the Gulf of Oman outside the strait. Exporters lean on Red Sea loadings and on offshore ship-to-ship transfers in the Gulf of Oman as ordinary practice. In August more than seventy percent of the crude that crossed the strait changed tankers offshore. Almost none had done so before the war. Iraq’s state-owned Oil Tanker Company and some refiners have chartered tankers to load Basrah crude inside the strait after Baghdad secured Iranian permission for those vessels to pass.

The counterweight falls on Iranian barrels. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Iran loaded “zero” barrels under the restrictions. Adm. Brad Cooper and the forces of U.S. Central Command maintain a blockade that continues to restrict a large share of Iran’s own oil exports. The system restored the volume by splitting the routes. It did not put the old chokepoint back alone.

The new volume heads toward plants that turn crude into fuel and feedstock across Asia. “This increase in Middle East supplies will also help alleviate tightness in the oil market, especially for Asian refiners,” said Xavier Tang. The traffic through the strait itself is the measure. “Given such a strong volume passing through the strait, it is clear Iran is losing its influence over it,” said Matt Smith, director of commodity research at Kpler.

The price tape still sits far above its peace level. The international benchmark, Brent crude for December delivery, traded at $102.25 a barrel on Monday morning. Other reports put Brent between $101.44 and $101.59. The United States benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, stood at $90.50, with other readings from $89.91 to $90.12. Before the war, Brent had been near $72 a barrel.

On Sunday the seven core members of OPEC+, the producer group that coordinates output among the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and its allies, agreed to leave their November production targets unchanged. Those seven produced about 25 million barrels a day in August, up 630,000 barrels a day from July. Barrels are back. The risk premium is not. Claims about control of the waterway have not matched the volumes clearing it.

Ali Fadavi, a senior commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, spoke in a televised interview on Sunday night and dismissed the oil volumes now moving through the route. He put the flow at three to four million barrels a day and called that amount negligible beside pre-war traffic. Fadavi said, for the first time, that no United States vessels were present in the Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz, the Sea of Oman, or the northern Indian Ocean, and that American warships were 100 percent vulnerable to IRGC attack.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s top negotiator and parliament speaker, said the strait would remain closed until the United States accepts Tehran’s seven-day plan to reopen the waterway. Iranian Security Chief Mohsen Rezaee pushed back against claims that the country was close to surrender. Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said heavy blows suffered by the United States at Tehran’s hands would eventually force it out of the Middle East.

Marisks intelligence cut a different line. “Current intelligence suggests that the recent pattern of incidents may not necessarily represent deliberate targeting of individually selected merchant vessels,” the service said. “Instead, available information indicates the possibility that Iranian forces are launching missiles into a predetermined engagement area or kill box, with weapons potentially acquiring and locking onto available radar signatures within that area.” Physical presence inside that zone at the relevant time could itself be the exposure. Tankers keep steaming through it.