USA success r.e. Iran hinges on....oil storage

[bootsyjam]

Very simple but then the 1000s of news channels pumping out entertainment sorry I mean detailed coverage and analysis don't really want to focus on this rather simple and boring issue.

To explain-oil is NOT meant to stay in the ground once it is tapped. It needs to move out.
If it doesn't then it congeals and can cause huge damage to oil fields.
Can take weeks/months/years to fix, costs a lot of money to repair (if you can even manage to do so) plus in terms of the lost revenue in this period.

And as an extra bonus you won't regain the same capacity that you had before.

Older oil fields are more susceptible to damage. Iran has largely older oil fields.

Countries I.e. Iran do have storage but not huge amounts. It comes out of the ground and it is exported-that's the model. You can cut back on production a bit but not by too much.

So in terms of the blockade the ONLY thing that matters (awful I know) is whether Iran is able to get the oil out/ how fast it is using up the storage that it has.

If they are at capacity then they will fold.
If they are somehow managing to export enough oil to stop their storage capacity from being maxed out fast then they won't

Everything else is just noise.

Oh and no one really knows how much time they have left r.e. capacity.
I would assume the US govt has an idea but who knows. You can use satellites to calculate how low ships are sitting in the water using the shadows they cast but that is the more widely available analysis. Doesn't tell us plebs how much, if any, oil Iran is exporting.

So toss a coin!

Oil companies are businesses. Decisions on which countries to focus investments are always based on a combination of cost, ease of operations, expected revenue returns and friendly gov't policies. As you say, companies aren't in the Gulf for altruistic reasons.

This is why in most developing countries, safety and/or environmental concerns are thrown out the window when they negatively impact profit/revenue. I know of a company drilling in the Caspian Sea where every day hard decisions have to be made on site, balancing the risk of a safety related incident with following mgt instructions to ignore safety. One of the reasons why the pay is so good for expats is that they can be blamed and fired if it all goes wrong.

...one thing Iran is fully aware of is that the global media will breathlessly report anything that Iran says whether it is true or not.

The global media report anything Iran and the USA say, whether it's true or not. It is their job to report statements from all the governments involved in this war.🤷‍♀️

I haven't noticed any breathlessness.

Update to my pp on Iran's supposed storage issues.

I've just spoken to the drilling sup in UAE and they said they'd contacted Sky News about the incorrect information on Iran's supposed storage problem, on their website .

Once incorrect info is posted online, it's returned in subsequent searches, often without the corrections. It's a catch 22 for all news reporters, and more so for the ordinary man in the street seeking accurate information.

Macbeth. Act 5, Scene 5
I'm all out of popcorn.

stop creating drama then.

Stop carrying your animus towards posters across threads. Just stop.

You stop.

That's a bit rich, given your tendancy to have a go at twiglets on threads she's not even on.

Thank you.

Yes I have noticed that too.

Hi there.

Just a friendly nudge from MNHQ - this thread is getting a bit lively! We love a good debate, but please do keep it courteous and remember our Talk Guidelines.

Carry on! 🙂

Best wishes.
MNHQ.

Are you making the same assumptions about a poster that I never named?

You changed your name just to post that?

Not sure what you mean by this.

Suggest we follow MN advice.

If, and I am saying if, the oil storage thing is part of a mis-information thing, then there will usually be someone who has tracked it.

It is clever how they do it, because it does end up being repeated in good faith.

I have done it myself in the past, tracing back from a main stream media story to source. It might go from Fox/Daily Mail to Breitbart to RFA for example. With the original RFA story being unsubstantiated.

I have also tracked it the other way. Tracked in near real time. How a press release in one place goes to paid story distributers, to sympathetic local indy news folk, and maybe after a week into mainstream.

And no foil hats.

In the case of this story, the boost was POTUS talking of exploding oil wells. Trump is rather famous for not fact checking after all.

The US has their own problems

https://www.newsweek.com/us-emergency-oil-reserve-approaching-all-time-low-12022135

Also in the FT but behind paywall
https://www.ft.com/content/d0be73c8-b8d8-4ffd-874e-e97a6ecffef7?syn-25a6b1a6=1

Yup. That's no surprise. Oil is a steady state process as we know. And Trump has been trying to flog US oil and oil products all over since the SOH closed. But production through the whole system can't just be ramped up instantly.

It's no surprise he has been digging into the strategic reserves.

Iranian oil exports fall to lowest level in six years, data shows

Iranian exports of crude oil and condensate fell to their lowest level in at least six years in May, falling well below 300,000 barrels per day, mainly due to the U.S. naval blockade, according to shipping data and analysts.

The U.S. began enforcing the blockade on April 13, choking Iranian exports as the oil market faces a supply crunch due to Iran's effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz cutting exports from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq and the United Arab Emirates.

Iran's exports averaged about 209,000 bpd in May, Vortexa data shows, down sharply from 1.34 million bpd in April and nearly 1.9 million bpd in March.

This marks their lowest level since late 2019 and early 2020, when U.S. President Donald Trump was pursuing a "maximum pressure" campaign against Iran in his first term, Vortexa said.

Iranian officials in New York did not immediately reply to a Reuters request for comment.

"The key drivers appear to be the disruption around the Strait of Hormuz, the U.S. naval blockade targeting vessels entering or departing Iranian ports, and the broader unwillingness of owners, operators, insurers, and counterparties to expose vessels and crews to the current security environment," said Vortexa analyst Claire Jungman.

Data from another firm, Kpler, showed a similar decline, although it pegged May exports slightly higher at 260,000 bpd — still a six-year low.

If the blockade persists for another two months, Iran could effectively run out of oil available to ship to China, its top buyer, Kpler analyst Homayoun Falakshahi said.

China's imports of Iranian crude fell to 1.10 million bpd in May, the lowest since January 2025, according to Kpler.

www.reuters.com/business/energy/iranian-oil-exports-fall-lowest-level-six-years-data-shows-2026-06-04/

Quote : "If the blockade persists for another two months, Iran could effectively run out of oil available to ship to China, its top buyer, Kpler analyst Homayoun Falakshahi said."

That's analysts for you.

So from this thread, the storage tanks are full. The wells can be stopped and started. But with overflowing storage tanks, they might run out of available oil to ship ?

That makes no logical sense.

And yet with all that overflowing oil, the data shows that Iranian oil exports have fallen to their lowest level in six years and that China's imports of Iranian crude are falling.

It's logical in the face of the of the US blockade and conservative nature of insurance companies etc.

If I have a warehouse with 500k cans of baked beans inside, but there is a delivery drivers strike and a picket line outside, then I will still have 500k cans of baked beans.

That the baked beans are not loaded into vans and delivered does not mean I have less baked beans.

Unless I eat them myself of course.

Where is the flaw in that logic ?

Lol - none.

You can enjoy looking at the baked beans all you want.

What will the consequences be? Not just for Iran but for the wider world?

Trump TRUTHS "Let the oil flow".

So this thread appears to have been a waste of time. Has he forgotten that he claimed the wells would all explode/ block/ collapse/ fail... or whatever it is he said would happen ?

He has a habit of doing this thing of making a claim that is later forgotten about.

I just watched Trumps speech to the G7 live on Sky, and among his ramblings he stated that there was about 4 weeks of oil reserves left.

That is world reserves he was talking about so far as I could make out.

So it was never about Iranian storage and exploding wells.