U.S. conducting stealth operation to transport oil through Hormuz - Many readers here have no doubt been wondering how the U.S. had experienced such huge builds in petroleum stocks for the past couple of weeks. If you missed it, for the weeks ended August 7 and August 14, domestic commercial crude inventories rose by 17 million bpd and 4 mmbpd, respectively, somewhat easing concerns about a potential price spike due to reaching tank bottoms.
Many readers have also no doubt been, like me, confused why the paper markets have remained relatively calm and short on price volatility amid the off-and-on hostilities which have erupted between various combinations of the U.S. military, the IRGC, and the Houthis in more recent weeks.
If this story at Axios is accurate - that the U.S. Navy really has been in control of the southern half of the Strait of Hormuz since June and that 15 -20 crude tankers per day have been stealthily transiting the choke point in the dark of night - it would help explain these seemingly unexplainable oil market dynamics.
Here’s an excerpt from the story:
The U.S. military has quietly established a shipping corridor in and out of the Strait of Hormuz to transport millions of barrels of oil each day — a notable success even as the broader war remains at a stalemate, two U.S. officials told Axios.
Under the operation, which has been underway for the last several weeks, 15–20 tankers have entered and exited the strait each night through a southern channel along the coast of Oman.
About 10 million barrels of oil a day — roughly half the pre-war volume — are being transported out of the strait and injected into the global energy market, the officials said.
Why it matters: The U.S.-led operation is mitigating one of the most painful aspects of the war: the disruption to oil supplies that sent crude prices soaring. While the amount of oil coming out of the strait is still below pre-war levels, it is making a discernible difference in global supplies, officials say.
How it works: The effort goes beyond escorting outbound tankers with oil on board. The U.S. military is helping empty tankers enter the Gulf from the Arabian Sea through the strait, pick up oil from countries in the region, and then exit.
The full details of the operation have not been previously reported.
“We have been controlling the southern lane of the Strait of Hormuz for two months now. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps can be a nuisance, but they don’t control the strait. We do,” one of the U.S. officials, who has direct knowledge of the matter, said.
[End]
So, is this real?
We must tread carefully here due to the unfortunate reality that President Donald Trump has spewed so much rank propaganda into the global information stream related to this war over the last 5 months that it is hard to know what is and is not true. Yes, Axios - though clearly a Democrat-biased media platform - does have a track record of being pretty careful about properly sourcing its stories and has provided among the most balanced reporting on this war since March. But even with that, it is not easy to trust a piece which is based almost entirely on information obtained from anonymous sources inside the Trump White House.
Sure, the piece is entirely consistent with Trump’s own talking points about the status of the conflict and who really is in control of the Strait of Hormuz. But that and $2.65 will get you a tall cup of Starbucks coffee. The President himself has sadly made it impossible to trust his word on anything related to Iran without third party support thanks to his own undisciplined social media obsessions.
That having been conceded, it is also key to point out that the Axios piece is entirely consistent with recent statements made by Energy Secretary Chris Wright, who remains the most credible administration spokesman on energy-related matters.
It took me a minute to find it this morning among my ever-expanding pile of stuff, but on August 11, Secretary Wright posted this about the situation:
Secretary Chris Wright@SecretaryWright
Thanks to the coordinated efforts of the U.S. military and our gulf allies, the seven-day average for oil leaving the Strait of Hormuz is currently up to almost 9 million barrels per day. When combined with the additional 5-7 million barrels per day leaving the region via newly
4:05 PM · Aug 11, 2026 · 2.05M Views
1.56K Replies · 1.68K Reposts · 8.36K Likes
Full Text:
Thanks to the coordinated efforts of the U.S. military and our gulf allies, the seven-day average for oil leaving the Strait of Hormuz is currently up to almost 9 million barrels per day.
When combined with the additional 5-7 million barrels per day leaving the region via newly upgraded pipelines and export facilities, total oil flows are currently averaging approximately 15 million barrels per day.
On Sunday alone, over 20 million barrels left the Arabian gulf region, which is above the pre-conflict average.
[End]
[Note: If you missed it, I also published a story analyzing this information at Forbes the following day at this link.]
Now, Wright was slammed by all the TDS-afflicted bots and minions on X, not to mention the 100,000 or so self-anointed “experts” on shipping traffic who mine for engagement there each day. But it must be said that Chris Wright is not someone who has been prone to putting his name to rank propaganda during the course of this presidency, or in his professional life in the private sector.
It also must be said that the information in that post rings truer today than it did 9 days ago in light of the price stability and inventory builds we’ve seen since August 11.
Those afflicted by the very real TDS disease will no doubt claim that it’s all a grand propaganda conspiracy into which Wright and the EIA and the very, very liberal and reliable Democrat operatives at Axios have all been co-opted by the magical, evil Orange Man. But does that really make sense to you?
Or - hear me out here: Does it make more sense to believe the United States Navy - far and away the most proficient and powerful seaborne force ever assembled by mankind - really has been able to secure a lane through Hormuz and has been escorting tankers through it undetected by all the thousands of “experts” who suddenly appeared out of nowhere on March 2 to inject crude oil into a global market that seems to have been oddly fully supplied for the past month or so?
Given a choice between trusting all the bots and scammers or trusting the United States Navy and Secretary Wright, I’ll go with the latter, thanks.
That is all.
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