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CENTCOM Spokesman Navy Capt. Tim Hawkins told CNBC Thursday that U.S. Central Command has escorted more than 660 million barrels of crude oil through the Strait of Hormuz since early May. Furthermore, he said that approximately 1,300 commercial vessels have received U.S. assistance and that multiple shipping routes through the Strait of Hormuz remain open.
Additionally, a U.S. task force operating out of Army headquarters at Fort Bragg, in North Carolina, is in charge of scheduling the convoys of tankers. According to a report published by Axios, this task force creates daily lists of all the ships, both loaded and empty, that are departing from the Gulf and those that are entering it. All the ships, however, are not traveling through the Strait at the same time. Instead, they are all leaving at night, traveling through the southern channel, close to the coast of Oman, under the protection of U.S. Air Force fighter planes. These planes are there to shoot down any drones or cruise missiles that Iran may launch against the convoys. CENTCOM previously conducted a two-week campaign that degraded Iranian radar and maritime surveillance systems, reducing Tehran's ability to track the route.
Much of the tankers escorted by CENTCOM will not show up on normal ship-tracking services. The Automatic Identification System (AIS) transponders of the tankers have been disabled. Kpler, a leading global provider of maritime data, analyzed data of all crude, LPG and LNG carrying vessels traveling through the Strait of Hormuz between August 1 and August 19. In total, 112 vessels traveled through the Strait during this period. However, 89 — or 79% — of the vessels were traveling in dark or unclassified mode, meaning their routes could not be assigned to a specific lane. Only two vessels openly traveled through the Omani southern route.
The numbers reveal the true scope of the operation. The 160-million-barrel rise since CENTCOM's July 29 tally implies a flow rate of roughly 7 million barrels per day under U.S. escort. That compares against 4.9 million barrels per day recorded by the U.S. Energy Information Administration in the second quarter — itself a dramatic collapse from the 21.6 million barrels per day flowing through Hormuz at the end of 2025. While the U.S. military escort has alleviated significant pressure on the commercial fleet, the strait remains a fraction of its former throughput.
There have been several near misses on the escorted southern channel. In July, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps issued a minefield warning for the route. On July 27, a tanker struck a mine outside Iran's preferred shipping corridor. The U.S. had already launched strikes against Iranian air-defense and coastal-surveillance systems on July 8, following attacks on three merchant vessels. The International Maritime Organization has recorded 68 confirmed incidents across the wider Middle East shipping crisis as of August 21, with 19 seafarers killed.
