BREAKING:
The diesel fuel Russia is now exporting to the United States at U.S. President Trump's request may have originated in Iran, as Russian oil refineries are largely unable to produce diesel because of Ukrainian attacks.
Russia has been importing most of the diesel it needs from Iran. In September, thousands of Iranian tanker trucks were spotted in various regions of Russia, including Ryazan, carrying Iranian diesel.
Russia may be buying Iranian diesel and reselling it to the United States. If so, Trump's attempt to lower U.S. energy prices and deceive American voters is putting money into the hands of Russia and Iran's Islamic regime.
On October 11th, a large crude oil tanker was said to have attempted to leave the Hormuz Strait when it detonated a naval mine and then exploded and caught fire.
Governments are tapping their emergency oil faster than ever, and the room to keep doing so is shrinking.
On Oct. 7, member governments of the International Energy Agency backed speeding up the oil stock releases they pledged under the agency’s March 2026 Collective Action, aiming to finish them as soon as possible. They also agreed to prioritize diesel, given how tight that market has become. According to Reuters, JPMorgan analysts read the move as an acceleration of barrels already promised, not a fresh intervention.
The March action was historic on its own. In response to the Iran war and the disruption of tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, IEA members agreed to make 400 million barrels of oil available to the market. It was only the sixth collective action since the agency’s founding in 1974, and by far the largest.
Seven months later, the buffer is visibly thinner. IEA governments still hold roughly 1.1 billion barrels of publicly held emergency stocks, including more than 200 million barrels of diesel, the agency says. In March, that figure was more than 1.2 billion barrels. Including company inventories, Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser estimated this week that more than 1 billion barrels have been pulled from stockpiles worldwide.
Oct 11 alone: 6 vessels struck (5 tankers + 1 container ship) in/around Hormuz, including multiple “time-late” reports issued the following day. Three were outbound tankers hit by unknown projectiles; one inbound container ship was also hit. A separate tanker was hit by a drone near Sohar anchorage, Oman.
October total (through ~Oct 12–13): At least 18 UKMTO attack reports on vessels in the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding region.
CENTCOM October reports only 1 ADNOC strike + 3 carriers “stalled and flagged” for “mechanical failures” or “suspicious activity.”
CENTCOM’s recent public releases (Oct 5 and Oct 10–11) focus almost exclusively on its own blockade enforcement: 4 commercial vessels disabled, 135 turned around, and 10 IRGC-linked tankers destroyed since the blockade resumed July 14. The Oct 10 strike that disabled the Panama-flagged bulk carrier Ocean Molica (aka Arika Sun) in the Gulf of Oman is highlighted, but there is no matching public tally of the volume of “unknown projectile” or Iranian-claimed strikes on commercial tankers.
Many UKMTO reports are explicitly labeled “time-late” and these incidents are reported hours or days after they occurred , so real-time public counts lag and can understate the pace.
In short, UKMTO (Royal Navy) and maritime outlets are logging a sustained high tempo of strikes with what I read was a minimum 12 earlier in the week plus a sharp cluster of 6 on Oct 11 and an October total of at least 18 . while CENTCOM’s public statements on the other hand prioritize its blockade metrics and specific U.S. strikes rather than a comprehensive public count of the tanker attacks. The gap is driven by delayed reporting, limited public attribution, and differing mission emphases.
The Conclusion is still the same: There is and never will be accurate reporting on the Strait of Hormuz. Don’t even get me started on tracker data and shitty satellite map tracking, lol we have tried so hard, and our second hand data is not accurate.
The spike in oil prices since the Iran war began this year has attracted more thieves, and they are increasingly professional criminals.
While oil theft has long been a part of the industry, the problem has become prevalent enough for the Dallas Fed to ask about in its quarterly surveys.
The latest one showed that nearly half of firms that are primarily focused on the Permian Basin said their operations have been impacted by theft in oilfields. By contrast, 86% of firms operating mostly outside the Permian said they were not impacted.
The Permian is the heart of the oil patch and the epicenter of the shale revolution that has transformed the U.S. into an energy superpower.
It stretches across the vast expanses of West Texas and southeastern New Mexico—and is dotted with drilling rigs, pipelines, trucks, and other infrastructure necessities.
That’s made the Permian a target-rich environment. And now that U.S. oil prices have been hovering around $100 a barrel lately, criminals can’t resist the payoff.
"An EU source tells Oilprice.com that Russian and Iranian crude is being blended into Kazakhstan's CPC Blend and shipped to Europe under an EU exemption. CPC flows surged 38.5%, while Kazakh oil production grew less than 2%."
What are your thoughts on today’s oil price? Drop your opinions, predictions, charts, memes , low and high effort post, your AI slop or even analysis below. Keep it civil and on-topic! This post is renewed daily.
Unless there is some compelling reason, other posts in the sub about oil prices will be removed. In a futile effort to improve the quality.
(Current WTI/Brent price can be checked on any major site.)
Arabian sea/Implied Hormuz way down on the daily and the moving average going down as well. There are like ~30 tankers sitting around/turning around in the arabian sea empty. BAM still down too. Haven't had a chance to update Malacca yet will update in a minute. Singapore up a lot on the daily.
Edit: updated Malacca again China is buying what it used to at a minimum.
Sea of Oman to Arabian Sea Implied Dark Traffic:
This is all the oil traffic out to the Arabian sea minus 2.5mb (pre war output of Fujairah and Oman) to estimate the additional output of dark traffic out of Hormuz as well as any additional output from the ADCOP pipeline. Usual traffic should be around 21mb of crude and oil products.
Adding this further crude vs product breakdown for Gulf of Oman to Arabaian Sea as well.
none added for near west coast of india.
Listing the actual ships and their draft/dwt as well as helps check if I messed up with double counts/fills
Oil products going out south from the Red Sea. Usual traffic is around 8mb. Edit: I dont think much is coming out any more from the East/West pipeline its very unclear what is output now. That still means the amount overall is down. The drop below is more from dropping Russian and other sources of usual oil going south out of the red sea as the Yanbu/East/West pipeline is all going north to suez.
Ships: ECO WEST COAST,MARLIN LAGOS,VOZROZHDENIYE,HANUMAN
Note based on 2024 the average daily output in tonnes was 211,000 tonnes per day. I think 2025/2026 is much higher but they don't yet have official data.
