Newsquawk, on the live feed at 05:05 UTC Friday, printed Kpler data showing four commodity vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz on Thursday, down from nine Wednesday, and below a 10-day average of around 15. [1] That nine is not Thursday's Reuters six. Print both. Do not average them. Wright's 17 million barrels remain Monday. Tape is not traffic.
Thursday's Economy file printed six commodity hulls Wednesday against Wright's Monday 17 million, below a 13-ship average. Wednesday's file printed Wright's wartime-record Monday flows against Kpler's four commodity hulls Tuesday, and Axios around 40 ships Tuesday, none hit. Print both. Do not average. Friday adds Thursday's four, a Newsquawk nine for Wednesday that conflicts with Reuters' six, a Department of Energy Wednesday barrel number, and Trump's Truth Social 18 million.
President Trump claimed yesterday, Axios reported, that 18 million barrels a day are moving, writing on Truth Social that "Hormuz Volumes are BACK." [2] Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC on Tuesday that 17 million barrels of crude and products combined flowed on Monday. [2] He has also said the multi-day rolling average is around 8 million barrels a day. [2] An Energy Department spokesperson told Axios that on Wednesday nearly 12 million barrels of oil and oil products moved through the strait. [2] Monday 17 million. Tuesday remains split: this paper's Kpler four, OilPrice's Kpler 11, Axios 40, CNN's official 40. Wednesday: Reuters six or Newsquawk nine, DOE nearly 12 million barrels. Thursday: four hulls. Do not average with Axios 40 or CNN 40. Those are escort and ship counts, not this print.
OilPrice's Friday reconstruction, in the paragraphs above the paywall, put Kpler at 11 visible commodity-vessel crossings Tuesday, and Lloyd's List Intelligence at roughly 12 transits a day from August 26 through September 1. [3] JMIC, it wrote, said 44 U.S.-facilitated vessels crossed over September 1 and 2, or 22 a day, while independent tracking continued to show only single-digit numbers moving in each direction. [3] Those figures count different categories. OilPrice's reconstructed Kpler clearance — cargoes on confirmed Hormuz transits plus oil that then appears outside the strait through the Gulf of Oman shuttle, with dark crossings added later — has averaged 8.6 million barrels a day since mid-June. [3] It does not include about 4 million barrels a day loaded at Fujairah and Omani terminals in August, barrels that never crossed Hormuz. [3] "We do not have any data supporting the 18 million bpd claim." [3] Five, 11, and six vessels visible in the daily data this week are the hulls OilPrice named. [3] Thursday's four is the new print.
Bob McNally of Rapidan told Axios the truth, or closer to it, arrives in a few weeks, when oil that came out has to go somewhere and be recorded. [2] Vortexa's 28-day moving average was around 8 million barrels of crude and products as of August 31, senior analyst Rohit Rathod told Axios. [2] Tanker Trackers said Wednesday that preliminary data showed crude transit specifically rising to an average of 5.94 million barrels a day over the past seven days. [2] Gregory Brew of Eurasia Group said more oil is getting out, "probably not as much as they are claiming," but "enough to give Trump the idea that time is on his side." [2] Axios named Brew and Rory Johnston as skeptics of the eye-popping claims. No independent /status/ URL for those posts was recovered. The quotes stay in Axios.
The Energy Department told Axios it maintains, with the U.S. military, "the best available data related to oil and oil products leaving the Arabian gulf." [2] Best available is a claim. Four Thursday hulls is a count. Wright remains Monday. Tape is not traffic.
-- HENDRIK VAN DER BERG, Brussels