Run the traders' own ratio and the two published accounts stop agreeing. If 7 to 8 million barrels a day is three-quarters of what moved before the war, pre-war throughput was 9.3 to 10.7 million, and Vortexa's seven-day average of close to 10 million already sits at the top of that band, roughly a third above the traders' midpoint [2][4][4]. One figure describes a waterway that has recovered; the other describes one still missing two and a half million barrels a day. The gap is probably ship-to-ship transfers, which can be counted at the loading, at the transfer or at the exit depending on who is watching, and TankerTrackers put at least fifteen simultaneous transfer clusters and a 25-million-barrel relay in the Gulf of Oman, which at 7.5 million a day is 3.3 days of exports sitting on water [14][5].
Composition tells more than the total. Kuwait and Qatar at 70 percent of a combined 2 million is 1.4 million barrels a day, 600,000 short of where they were [3][2], so of the 3 to 4 million added since mid-July they can account for 1.4 million at the absolute most, leaving about 2.1 million from elsewhere [2][3]. Aramco's 4 million barrels sold to China this month, about 130,000 a day and under 2 percent of the flow, gives the flavour of the workarounds rather than their size [15][6].
Washington has meanwhile stopped spending. Trimming the weekly reserve draw from 8 to 9 million barrels to 4 to 6 million is 500,000 barrels a day of supply withheld [5][1], which is a decision to let price do the rationing instead of inventory, and the rationing shows up where you would expect: the Naked Capitalism account reports less supply panic in Southeast Asia, high prices damping activity, and a government nudging diesel prices down a smidge [16].
Crude volume is the problem that routes around itself. Diesel is not, because the mechanism in this account is that US refiners run heavy Canadian barrels to make it, and Canada is the biggest supplier of that feedstock at the moment the Trump row is pushing near-term Canadian exports lower [6][7]. No amount of relay ingenuity off Oman changes what a refinery is plumbed to process.
This is thin material and I would rather say so than dress it: there is no Canadian import volume here, no crack spread, no distillate inventory figure, so the diesel half of the thesis rests on one publisher's assertion and its own headline [6][7]. Which leaves three readings. The recovery is a measurement artifact and Rosemary Kelanic's 3 to 5 million estimate was nearer the mark [11]; or the row with Ottawa settles and the heavy barrels return, making this a two-month spread trade; or, the more interesting version, the volume was always a favour rather than a capacity, granted while Iran negotiated with Oman, while China drew down its own reserve to keep the global economy off the floor [12], and while Iran moved its own crude out through Iraq [13], with Tehran already reported to be tightening in response to the Bessent economic-war threat [8].
My view, held loosely: the crude number has become a price story and the diesel number is a cost story, and the same post's read that investors are fingering inflation rather than Treasury meddling points at the second [17]. If I am wrong, the tell will be an early settlement with Ottawa, the cheapest fix in this story and the only one that needs nobody's navy.
