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Roughly 40 tankers moved in and out of the Strait of Hormuz through its southern deep-water channel on Friday night, three US officials told Axios correspondent Barak Ravid, in what would mark a significant jump in traffic through the war-disrupted waterway.
The officials said about 16 million barrels of oil were moved out of the strait through the channel that night alone.
If accurate, the figure represents more than double the pace US officials had described in recent weeks, when they told Ravid that 15 to 20 tankers were making the nightly passage as part of a US-backed effort to keep oil flowing despite the ongoing war and the disruption it has caused to regional shipping.
The reported surge follows what Axios described earlier this month as a covert US military operation to move oil through the strait via a southern channel that hugs the coast of Oman, largely avoiding Iranian waters.
Two US officials had told the outlet that the operation, running for several weeks, was moving about 10 million barrels of oil a day, roughly half of pre-war volumes, even as the broader conflict between Washington and Tehran remained at a stalemate.
US Central Command has separately said its forces have helped facilitate the passage of roughly 1,300 commercial vessels and more than 660 million barrels of crude oil through Hormuz since early May.
A Central Command spokesman said multiple routes through the strait remain "free and open for commercial transit." Shipments have still lagged far behind pre-war levels, when about 20 million barrels a day passed through the chokepoint.
Speaking to a crowd in South Carolina on Friday, U.S. President Trump described the strait as "an American territory right now," while also making light of the prospect of further strikes on Iran.
His remarks came against the backdrop of a conflict that began in late February, when US and Israeli strikes on Iran, including the killing of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, prompted Tehran to effectively close the strait and launch retaliatory attacks across the region. Washington reimposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports in mid-July after a ceasefire and subsequent negotiations broke down.
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