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No Crude Loadings at Iran's Kharg Island as US Blockade Bites, Bloomberg Analysis Says

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Iran's Kharg Island has seen no crude tanker loadings for at least 10 days amid mounting pressure on Tehran from a US naval blockade that has disrupted the country's oil exports, a Bloomberg analysis said Monday.

Satellite imagery from the European Union's Sentinel missions taken on seven separate days since May 8 showed no large tankers loading crude at the island's export berths.

The interruption threatens to remove millions of barrels of supply from global markets. Before the blockade, Iran had been one of the largest crude exporters in the Middle East.

TankerTrackers.com, a maritime intelligence firm that uses satellite tracking, estimated that Kharg Island still had between 7 million barrels and 8 million barrels of available storage capacity, according to the analysis.

The firm said it was unclear how quickly storage would fill because Iran had reduced production in response to the blockade.

Meanwhile, Iran has shifted some activity to its Jask oil terminal, located east of the Strait of Hormuz on the Gulf of Oman.

On Monday, a Sentinel-1 satellite image showed a tanker moored at Jask's offshore loading buoy, while a separate Sentinel-2 image from Sunday showed an Aframax-sized vessel approaching the terminal.

Bloomberg vessel-tracking data identified the tanker as the Vernon, a ship sanctioned by the US over its involvement in Iran's oil trade. It was unclear whether the vessel would attempt to pass through the US blockade.

Oil loadings at Jask remain rare, according to Bloomberg analysis. Since the terminal officially opened in 2021, only nine tankers have loaded crude there, with five of those shipments occurring since the conflict began in late February.

The US Navy had redirected 84 Iran-linked commercial vessels and disabled four others since imposing the blockade on April 13, the US Central Command said in a social media post on Monday.

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