Gulf countries may be paying Iran to let their oil through the Strait of Hormuz, handing Tehran a significant share of each cargo. That is the suspicion of Michelle Brohard, head of policy and geopolitical risk at the maritime tracking firm Kpler. She presented it as speculation, and the claim has not been independently verified.
“I suspect there is a toll that’s being paid, which is giving these ships safe passage,” Brohard said in an interview with energy analyst Rory Johnston. She added that the countries likely know the arrangement is unsustainable, both because of the cost of US escorts and because of “paying Iran 10 percent of their cargo, or 20 percent of their cargo.” The result, in her words, is “a race to get out as much as possible, as quickly as possible before the war restarts.”
Exports rebound
Her theory is an attempt to explain a puzzle. Middle East crude exports have climbed back above levels from before the US-Israel war on Iran began in February. Provisional Kpler data show exports reached between 19.5 and 22.5 million barrels per day on four days in the last week of September, against an average of about 18 million before the war. Excluding Iran, crude exports averaged at least 16.5 million barrels per day across September.
The usual explanation credits US ships escorting tankers out of the strait, plus more ship-to-ship transfers that lower the risk of Iranian missiles and drones. Prices staying high has been put down to elevated insurance rates and a market pricing in a return to open war. Brent crude traded at about $101.59 a barrel on Monday, down 0.71 percent, and US West Texas Intermediate fell 1.2 percent to about $90.05.
The pattern has continued into October. Iraq’s state-owned Oil Tanker Company announced on Saturday that it moved two million barrels on a very large crude carrier through the strait, its first such operation in decades, according to its director general. Kpler says 40 percent of exports now bypass Hormuz, with much of it flowing through pipelines in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and the figures include Red Sea shipments. They exclude any vessels that crossed with transponders switched off.
Is there a toll?
There is some history. As early as March, Lloyd’s List reported that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps had set up a “toll booth” system to control traffic through the strait. In September the US government sanctioned a digital assets firm, BitBank, which it said Iran’s Hormuz Safe Marine Services Authority had used to move money to Tehran. The authority is a government body set up to collect fees for safe transit. The Trump administration has repeatedly said Iran will not be allowed to charge a toll under any deal with Washington.
Experts are divided. Abdul Khalique, head of the Liverpool John Moores University Maritime Centre, called Brohard’s idea plausible but better described as an “informal security mechanism rather than a formal maritime levy.” He told Al Jazeera that “no public proof confirms a systematic, state-run Iranian toll system,” and that the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea protects transit passage, “rendering formal tolls legally dubious.” Chris Beauchamp, chief market analyst at IG Group, said the scenario was possible “in part.”
Iran disputes that it has lost control of the waterway. Senior IRGC commander Ali Fadavi said on Sunday that only three to four million barrels per day were moving along a US-supervised route, which he called “negligible” next to pre-war traffic of about 125 large commercial vessels a day.
Risks that remain
Tension has not eased. A tanker was attacked on Sunday. On Monday the IRGC told another tanker to turn back or risk being targeted, according to the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations group. Susannah Streeter of Wealth Club said the strait “remains a major flashpoint.”
Beauchamp said the larger problem now is shipping itself. The shuttle system moving oil out of the Gulf needs plenty of ships, which has pushed freight rates up and reduced supply beyond the region, and Asian buyers are sourcing crude from farther away, lengthening transit times. The Group of Seven also announced last week that it would release 100 million barrels of oil from emergency reserves.
