Kharg Island’s Tanker Buildup Came Back Under Fire

Twenty-three tankers sat around Iran’s Kharg Island on May 16, the largest group since the US Navy closed the country’s ports a month earlier. Satellite images showed the ships in the anchorage and at the liquefied petroleum gas jetty, while the crude berths stayed empty.

The May queue did sail once a June deal opened the ports. The Navy put the blockade back on July 14, and September strikes hit tankers off the same island.

The May Pile-Up at Kharg Island

On April 13, US warships began gathering in the Gulf of Oman to stop traffic to and from Iranian ports. Four tankers were around Kharg that day. By May 16 the count was 23, a figure confirmed by United Against Nuclear Iran, a US policy group that tracks Tehran’s tanker fleet.

Charlie Brown, an adviser to the group, read the pictures as a jam, not a surge in trade.

Vessels are accumulating at anchorages around the island, suggesting growing delays and bottlenecks across Iran’s crude and oil export system.

Charlie Brown, adviser to United Against Nuclear Iran

Crude berths sat unused, a repeat of the empty jetties at Iran’s Kharg hub seen after the Navy closed the ports. One unidentified ship was at the southeastern LPG berth, the second such call since the war began. The Nidi, formerly the Gas Zeina, had used that berth in early April and later turned up off India’s west coast.

US Central Command said on May 17 that American forces had turned around 81 commercial vessels and disabled four ships in that first campaign. Cloud and gaps in Sentinel coverage made daily counts messy, but the direction was not. Oil was stacking in the Gulf because laden ships could not leave and empty ones could not come in to load.

UANI’s May tracker recorded 2.01 million barrels in May exports that actually crossed the blockade line, averaging 64,921 barrels a day, a 93% drop from April and about $219 million of oil. No crude cargo got out. By May 31 the group counted 22 tankers at Kharg, 14 of them laden, and about 69 laden tankers inside the line, a floating stall of more than 80 million barrels bound, in normal times, for China.

How the June Deal Emptied the Anchorage

On June 17 President Trump signed a memorandum of understanding with Iran and the two-month blockade came off. Kharg, which handles more than 90 percent of Iran’s crude on its jetties, started loading again within days.

Ship-tracking on June 20 showed three very large crude carriers, Stream, Impalas and Lauren II, each able to lift about 2 million barrels, at the Sea Island terminal west of the island. Sentinel-2 images that Saturday had two already on the berth and a third coming in. The berths had been empty the day before. From May 6, only one VLCC had been seen at either jetty in pictures covering 27 of 44 days.

The ships that had sat through May moved as a group. On June 19 alone, UANI counted 11 tankers leaving the Gulf of Oman with more than 16 million barrels. For June the group tracked 52.7 million barrels, averaging 1,758,133 barrels a day, worth about $4.51 billion, against May’s $219 million. A lot of that oil had been loaded earlier and was only then free to sail, so the June spike was a release of the May queue as much as a new loading boom.

THE BLOCKADE CLOCK

1. April 13, 2026: US forces begin a naval blockade of Iranian ports and coastal traffic.
2. May 16, 2026: Twenty-three tankers sit around Kharg, with crude berths empty.
3. June 17, 2026: A US-Iran deal lifts the blockade; OFAC’s General License X on June 22 briefly allows Iranian oil sales.
4. July 7, 2026: Washington revokes the license after IRGC attacks on commercial ships; Trump says the deal is over on July 8.
5. July 14, 2026: The Navy restores the blockade on traffic to and from Iranian ports.

The opening lasted from June 17 until July 14, 27 days. China remained the buyer. Tankers ran the Malacca and Singapore straits, went dark near Malaysia’s eastern outer port limits, and passed cargoes to ships serving independent Chinese refiners.

Empty Jetties Under a Second Blockade

Once the blockade returned, Kharg slipped back toward the May pattern: ships in the roads, little moving at the berths, and crude that could be loaded still trapped inside the line. UANI has not tracked any tanker laden with Iranian crude that left the Gulf of Oman and avoided US enforcement since July 12, two days before the restart.

Kpler, the commodities data firm, put Iranian crude at 1.85 million barrels a day in March and April. August loadings were about 255,000 barrels a day, 86% below that spring pace and about two-thirds below July’s roughly 740,000 barrels a day. Those August barrels did not become exports. They sat.

KHARG ACROSS THREE PHASES

Neighbors did not stay stuck with Iran. In the week starting August 3, Kharg stocks fell to 19.3 million barrels even with almost no loading, a 700,000-barrel drop that Kpler read as wells being shut rather than tanks being filled, while 5.2 million barrels a day of non-Iranian crude left the Gulf, including ship-to-ship volumes.

Claims that Iranian oil is still leaving by loading in Oman and transferring at sea run into that July 12 line. UANI’s count of zero crude clearances is the working record, and Vortexa analyst Claire Jungman noted that even in 2019-20 some Iranian crude still cleared Hormuz every month. This stretch has not.

US Strikes Hit Ships Waiting Off Kharg

The second blockade did not stay a radio-and-rudder operation. After the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired ballistic missiles at two US Navy ships, American forces struck Iranian crude carriers on September 5 and again on September 8, including ships off Kharg itself.

THE TANKERS US FORCES HIT IN SEPTEMBER

• M/T Downy: Laden IRGC crude carrier permanently disabled off Kharg Island on September 5 (IMO 9218480).
• M/T Stark 1: Laden carrier disabled near Jask the same day (IMO 9171450).
• M/T Kylo: Unladen carrier, also known as Noxen, destroyed and sunk in the Gulf of Oman after the crew left (IMO 9189146).
• M/T Kaviz, Charminar, Horizon 1 and Riesco: Four IRGC crude carriers struck in the Gulf of Oman on September 8.
• M/T Derya: Struck near Kharg on September 8 (IMO 9569700), a ship UANI had watched in May on a long run toward China via the Lombok Strait.

Crews were told to leave before the September 8 ships were destroyed. Local pictures in the following days showed smoke from a tanker anchored near Kharg. The May parking lot had become a place where waiting hulls burn.

On September 10, US Central Command said its forces had redirected 96 commercial vessels since the July 14 restart and had let more than 50 aid ships through. As of September 7 it had also disabled three ships and boarded two.

A U.S. Navy MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter launches from the flight deck of USS Rafael Peralta (DDG 115) while enforcing the U.S. blockade against Iran. As of Sept. 10, U.S. forces have redirected 96 commercial vessels to ensure total compliance. More than 50 vessels supporting… pic.twitter.com/lhDrPDfG70

— U.S. Central Command (@CENTCOM) September 10, 2026

UANI, using International Maritime Organization tallies, counts 79 commercial-ship incidents across the Persian Gulf, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman since the war began, and 21 seafarer deaths. Pre-war traffic through Hormuz ran about 138 vessels a day. That waterway is moving again for other people’s oil. It is not moving Iran’s crude.

Iran Is Already Shutting Wells

The May warning was that Kharg could not keep loading if tankers could not rotate, and that Tehran would have to slow the fields. Homayoun Falakshahi, Kpler’s head of crude-oil analysis, said the renewed blockade is making the status quo more expensive for Tehran, and that domestic stocks have not risen in line with the export collapse, which he reads as output already cut toward what the country can burn at home.

The August drop in Kharg stocks, 700,000 barrels down to 19.3 million, is the on-island version of that cut. Tanks that should have filled while exports were blocked instead went the other way.

NIOC has done this before under sanctions, rotating shut-ins so mature carbonate fields do not lose pressure all at once. That work is costly, and restarts on those reservoirs are slow. Israeli strikes on South Pars phases have also taken about 100,000 to 120,000 barrels a day of condensate capacity out for months, a cap that does not lift if the blockade does.

Truck and rail cannot replace Kharg. Falakshahi has put road movements at no more than about 40,000 barrels a day, against pre-war exports near 2 million. The island is still the pipe. When it seizes, the fields seize with it.

China Still Has Barrels Outside the Line

The June sail-out bought Tehran time in Asia. Oil that cleared during those 27 days is still being sold from floating storage to Chinese buyers, with payment often landing one to two months after discharge. Kpler estimates the stash already beyond the blockade has fallen from about 90 million barrels in mid-July to about 29 million, and that at the current lift it could be gone by mid-October.

That is the mixed ledger. The Navy has stopped new crude from leaving the Gulf of Oman. China is still running down what escaped in June. When that stock is gone, the foreign-currency lag ends, unless another window opens. Seven Iran-flagged tankers were in the Malaysian eastern outer port limits on September 10, with more ghost-fleet ships loitering for ship-to-ship transfers, a leftover market for barrels that are already out, not a path for barrels still at Kharg.

On September 10 UANI identified 52 tankers laden with Iranian oil along the Iranian coastline. Since July 14 it has counted 29 oil and petrochemical loadings, only six of them from Kharg.

Only the Cooking-Gas Ships Got Through

The one leak in the line is small. About six handymax tankers carrying Iranian LPG have passed since the blockade resumed. On September 10 two handymax ships were still loading LPG at Assaluyeh, the petrochemical hub, not at Kharg’s crude jetties.

That matches the May oddity: crude berths idle, an LPG ship on the southeastern corner. Cooking-gas cargoes move on smaller hulls and have been treated as a thinner target set than 2-million-barrel crude carriers. They do not replace Kharg’s crude system, and they do not pay for it.

The 23 tankers off Kharg in May were the first time the blockade made the island look like a parking lot. Those ships got a 27-day exit. The island filled again, and this time the ships that wait there are being hit. UANI still has 52 laden tankers on the coast, and the 29 million barrels left outside the line could be gone by mid-October if China keeps lifting them.