Iran is apparently exporting much more oil than it should
Official data suggests Iranian oil export volume to be far higher than expected.
Iran exports far more crude oil than US numbers suggest, data from TankerTrackers.com revealed, NBC News reported. According to the data, Iran exports up to 600,000 barrels a day, using ship-to-ship transfers with transponders turned off to avoid detection, thereby circumventing US sanctions. The daily average compares to an estimate of 227,000 bpd made in a US Congress report, NBC's Raf Sanchez wrote on Twitter. TankerTrackers.com first reported in 2018, after President Trump reinstated sanctions on Iranian exports, that Iranian tankers turned off their transponders to hide the destination of their journeys. Back then, most of the tanker tracking data came precisely from transponders and port authorities, which made most reports of Iranian tanker movements unreliable. Last year, a US State Department official told the media that the division is tracking ship-to-ship transfers and is working with other governments to ensure they too are tracking what is becoming one of the few opportunities for Iran will still bring its crude oil to foreign markets. Most of Iran's oil goes to China one way or another. As Simon Watkins reported for Oil Genealogie earlier this month, China has even stocked up on cheap Iranian crude oil. Citing an unnamed oil industry source near Tehran's oil ministry, Watkins said China absorbed about 8.1 million barrels of Iranian oil between June 1 and July 21. According to official reports from China, the country had not imported Iranian crude oil in June. But not all of Iranian oil reaches China directly from Iran, Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, told Oilogle earlier this year. As Oilprice's Watkins notes in its latest report, citing well-known Iranian sources, much of the oil enters China via Malaysia and some of it via Indonesia. In order to circumvent the sanctions, a tanker's registration documents, which indicate its origin and ownership, are hung up in such a way that it looks like the oil comes from Malaysia or Indonesia.