After two months of near-total shutdown, Iranian crude oil is moving again. Maritime intelligence firm TankerTrackers reported that two tankers have left Iran carrying a combined 3.8 million barrels of crude, the first successful exports since the US imposed a naval blockade on April 13, 2026.
Iran’s oil exports in May 2026 had collapsed by over 90% year-over-year, cratering to roughly 65,000 barrels per day. Two tankers sneaking through doesn’t exactly signal a return to business as usual.
The blockade’s stranglehold on Iranian oil
The US naval blockade, which began in mid-April, has been devastatingly effective. TankerTrackers has estimated that approximately 60 million barrels of Iranian crude have been stranded as a result, unable to cross the blockade perimeter in the Gulf of Oman.
The maritime intelligence community measures “successful exports” by whether tankers actually pass beyond that perimeter. During May, not a single barrel of crude made it through. Iran tried workarounds, including ship-to-ship transfers near Indonesia and vessels disabling their Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders to go dark.
