US claims Middle East oil flows rebound to 15M bpd amid scrutiny from independent trackers

US Energy Secretary Chris Wright announced on August 12 that oil flows from the Middle East and Gulf region have rebounded to approximately 15 million barrels per day. That figure breaks down into roughly 9 million bpd transiting the Strait of Hormuz and an additional 5 to 7 million bpd flowing through upgraded pipelines and alternative export facilities. That would put regional exports at about 75% of their pre-conflict baseline, when normal flows ran in the neighborhood of 20 to 21 million bpd before the onset of the US/Israel-Iran conflict on February 28, 2026. The data gap Commercial vessel-tracking services estimate actual Hormuz transits at somewhere between 4 and 8 million bpd. Even the upper bound falls well short of the 9 million bpd Wright cited for the strait alone. Rystad Energy previously estimated that regional shut-in crude production peaked at 11.7 million bpd during the most intense phase of hostilities. That means at the conflict’s worst point, more than half of the region’s normal output was offline. Earlier reports had pegged Gulf export rebounds at around 16.1 million bpd, a figure that also folded in bypass routes and alternative infrastructure. That number dr...