Iran is currently the third largest (maritime method) supplier of crude oil to China. Most trackers do not actually realize this.

China will continue o post it as imports from Malaysia, Indonesia, UAE and wherever else the STS transfers occur.

#OOTT

There’s close to 30 million barrels in transit and analysts for the past 2.25 years have been ignorantly claiming that it’s only a small amount and heading to bonded storage. Meanwhile, we have tracked over 1.1 billion barrels since US sanctions were announced. Bonded nonsense.

1.1 billion is thetotal exports by Iran, not just to China even though it accounts for most of that amount.

They take it in, refine it and consume it. Traders abroad who organize the shipments make all the money while the people in Iran don’t see a single dime of it.

Now that Brent is up and Saudi is down, I expect to see more IR and VE barrels heading to China. The US will need to boost imports by Q2 given the summer driving season. Production will be flat given lack of investment and federal land fracking ban. Saudi will supply them.

If Iran gets a waiver of even 500Kbpd right now in order to sell to KR, TR, JP, GR and IT, then they'll be back at 2018 levels for sure.

Congress however, went with faulty data based entirely on AIS. Taxpayers and/or cash printing machines deserve better intel.

This is also why they boosted their average exports in the past few months, because they want to lift their baseline. Any extra barrel they're given in waivers is just a bonus.

Iran's fleet more than doubled in the past two years alone, and none of the vessels need an IR flag.

Try adding a 500Kbpd waiver to this and see what you get. Mind you, this is already old data. Exports NEVER hit zero and neither did the revenues. They just didn’t go where they should have: the people.