The biggest oil chokepoint nobody talks about just turned the lights back on.
Iran restarted crude loadings at Kharg Island on Saturday, the first since a U.S. Navy blockade shut the terminal six weeks ago. Three supertankers are docked at the Sea Island terminal just west of Kharg, and each one can hold about 2 million barrels of crude.
That works out to 6 million barrels of oil ready to ship from a single site.
The U.S. Navy put a blockade on Iranian ports on April 13. The move came in response to Iran's grip on the Strait of Hormuz at the start of the U.S.-Iran war on February 28.
For weeks, no loaded Iranian tankers were getting out. Empty ones were still slipping in.
Vessel trackers counted roughly 20 empty tankers staged near Kharg, with combined storage above 25 million barrels. Iran was building a backlog of oil it could not ship.
Now that backlog has a path to market.
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The two sides signed an interim peace deal electronically in mid-June, after a planned in-person ceremony in Geneva was postponed. The agreement removed the U.S. naval blockade and extended the existing ceasefire.
Tanker traffic in the Strait of Hormuz had already started to pick up before the official signing, with three Iranian carriers and three Saudi supertankers moving through in the days prior.
Saturday's loadings at Kharg are the first since the formal signing. They signal that the deal is being treated as real on the water, not just on paper.
About a fifth of the world's seaborne oil moves through this part of the Persian Gulf. When Iran's biggest export terminal restarts, that is supply hitting global markets, with the backlog of waiting tankers likely coming in waves.
Tanker rates were already running hot when traffic resumed through the strait. New crude loadings at Kharg could keep day rates high for weeks while the freed-up barrels find buyers.
Lower-cost Iranian oil reaching Asia also puts a fresh weight on the broader oil market. OPEC has yet to say how it plans to handle the extra barrels.
For traders, that is a lot of oil held back by one fragile deal. Saturday's competing announcement that Iran's military had declared the strait closed adds the kind of headline risk that keeps oil shorts honest.
For now, the ships are loading. The next question is how long they keep loading.
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