Iran is resorting to “Houdini tricks” to sustain oil exports as US sanctions loom. New data suggests the magic might be working. With new sleights of hand including disappearing oil tankers, the use of floating storage, and ship-to-ship transfers, tracking Iranian exports is getting harder than ever, leading to divergent estimates from oil analysts.
While S&P Global Platts has reported Iran’s September exports at about 1.7 million bpd, marking an 11 percent decline from August, data from TankerTrackers.com, a service which reports shipments and storage of crude oil globally, puts the export volume at just over 2 million bpd. The divergence in the datasets represents not merely 300,000 bpd, but also the difference between two narratives about the state of Iran’s exports in the face of returning US sanctions.
As part of S&P Global Platts’ announcement of the September figures, Paul Sheldon, chief geopolitical adviser at company, stated, “Iranian export losses have already accelerated faster than we expected.” On this basis, Platts is predicting Iran’s exports will fall to 1.1 million bpd by November, when U.S. sanctions on Iran’s oil industry are set to return. Similar analysis from Bloomberg and Reuters has contributed to the sense that Iran’s exports are dropping fast. But these assessments may be leaving a significant number of barrels uncounted by failing to properly capture tankers which have turned off their geolocation transponders.