`Three U.S. officials told Axios correspondent Barak Ravid that about 40 tankers transited the Strait of Hormuz through the southern deep channel on Friday night, and that some 16 million barrels of oil moved out of the strait by that route.
The vessel-tracking firm Kpler recorded zero west-to-east crossings that day and zero barrels leaving the strait, according to Drop Site News. Kpler’s counts for the surrounding days are similarly nowhere near the American number: seven commodity ships on Thursday, six on the preceding Monday, three on Saturday and two on Sunday—with no very large crude carriers and no LNG tankers among them. Kpler’s own assessment on Aug. 19 was that the strait remains closed, traffic having run at about 40% of the roughly 15 million barrels a day it averaged in 2025 even during the 60-day memorandum, and thinner since.
Kpler works from satellite imagery rather than transponder signals alone, which is what allows it to count the “dark” transits that have kept some oil moving.
The forty tankers in a single night claimed by Axios would be several times any daily figure Kpler has recorded this month.