Many of the vessels that passed through the strait were so-called \u201cdark\u201d transits evading Western government sanctions and oversight that likely have ties to Iran, maritime data firm Lloyd\u2019s List Intelligence said. More recently, vessels with ties to India and Pakistan have also successfully crossed the strait as governments stepped up negotiations.<\/p>\n
As crude prices spiked above $100 a barrel, U.S. President Donald Trump pressured allies and trade partners to send warships and reopen the strait, hoping to bring oil prices lower.<\/p>\n
Most shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway for global oil and gas transport that supplies roughly one-fifth of the world\u2019s crude oil, has been halted since early March, after the war started. About 20 vessels have been attacked in the area.However, Iran has still managed to export well above 16 million barrels of oil since the beginning of March, trade data and analytics platform Kpler estimated. Due to Western sanctions and associated risks, China has been the biggest buyer of Iranian oil.There has been \u201dcontinued resilience\u201d in Iran\u2019s oil export volumes, said Kpler trade risk analyst Ana Subasic.<\/p>\n
Iran has managed to profit from oil sales and also \u201cpreserve its own export artery\u201d by using control over the chokepoint, said Kun Cao, client director at consulting firm Reddal.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s oil export data estimates are largely aligned with maritime traffic data.At least 89 ships crossed the Strait of Hormuz between March 1 and 15 \u2013 including 16 oil tankers, according to Lloyd\u2019s List Intelligence, down from roughly 100 to 135 vessel passages per day before the war. More than one-fifth of the 89 vessels were believed to be Iran-affiliated, while Chinese and Greece affiliated ships are among the rest, it said. The Pakistan-flagged crude oil tanker Karachi, controlled by the Pakistan National Shipping Corp., passed through the strait on Sunday, Lloyd\u2019s List Intelligence said.<\/p>\n
Shariq Amin, a spokesman at the Pakistan Port Trust, refused to confirm or deny which route the MT Karachi had used but he said the ship would soon safely reach Pakistan.<\/p>\n
The India-flagged liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) carriers Shivalik and Nanda Devi, both owned by state-owned Shipping Corp. of India, also traveled through the strait around March 13 or 14, according to Lloyd\u2019s List Intelligence. LPG is used as a primary cooking fuel by millions of Indian households.<\/p>\n
India\u2019s foreign minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, told the Financial Times the two vessels\u2019 were able to pass following talks with Iran. Iraq was also in talks with Iran to allow Iraqi oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, its state-run news agency reported.Oil prices have jumped more than 40% to above $100 per barrel since the Iran war began, and Iran has threatened it won\u2019t allow \u201ceven a single liter of oil\u201d destined for the U.S., and Israel and their allies to pass through.<\/p>\n
To try to stabilize oil prices, the U.S. said it was allowing Iranian oil tankers to cross the strait. \u201cThe Iranian ships have been getting out already, and we\u2019ve let that happen to supply the rest of the world,\u201d Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in an interview with CNBC on Monday.The U.S. bombed military sites on Kharg Island off the Iranian coast, which is key for Iran\u2019s oil network and exports, but President Donald Trump said he had left its oil infrastructure alone for now.<\/p>\n
The latest passages through the Strait of Hormuz show the strait was not simply \u201cclosed,\u201d Cao said. \u201cIt is better understood as closed selectively against some traffic, while still functioning for Iranian exports and a narrow set of tolerated non-Iranian movements,\u201d he said.However, if Iran\u2019s plan is to \u201cinflict pain through higher energy prices, the number of tankers it allows through the Strait of Hormuz may be very limited,\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Many of the vessels that passed through the strait were so-called \u201cdark\u201d transits evading Western government sanctions and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27322,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[12784,11293,621,12786,12785,12787,3400,102,34,891,591,213,4739,1219,101,596,36],"class_list":{"0":"post-27321","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-strait-of-hormuz","8":"tag-12784","9":"tag-about","10":"tag-as","11":"tag-barrels","12":"tag-cross","13":"tag-despite","14":"tag-exports","15":"tag-hormuz","16":"tag-iran","17":"tag-millions","18":"tag-of","19":"tag-oil","20":"tag-ships","21":"tag-strait","22":"tag-strait-of-hormuz","23":"tag-the","24":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116258136598281697","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27321","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27321"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27321\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}