Gulf oil exports rose by more than 3 million barrels a day in June compared with May, pushing combined flows from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Iraq and Iran above 10 million barrels per day, according to Kpler data. Vortexa put the June figure slightly higher, at 10.2 million bpd, up from 7 million in May. The U.S. military’s role in keeping the Strait of Hormuz open has been central to the recovery, but YourDailyAnalysis starts with the number that tempers the headline: even after the jump, exports remain roughly 40% below the 16.5 million bpd recorded a year earlier, before the conflict disrupted the region’s shipping lanes.
The mechanics of the recovery matter more than the topline figure. The June 17 agreement between the U.S. and Iran to halt the conflict and restore shipping through Hormuz triggered a faster-than-expected clearing of the backlog of crude that had been stranded in the Gulf. Kpler analyst Johannes Rauball put the remaining transit backlog at about 23 million barrels, down sharply from a peak of 96 million barrels of floating storage in late April. YourDailyAnalysis treats that drawdown pace as the most useful leading indicator in the dataset: it tells you how quickly shippers regained confidence in the strait’s safety, which is a better real-time gauge of risk perception than any official statement.
The UAE’s performance is the standout data point. Emirati exports hit a record 3.7 million to 3.8 million barrels per day in June – more than 1 million bpd above May levels – according to Kpler, Vortexa and LSEG figures. Ship broker BRS logged 98 tankers crossing the strait between June 22 and June 28, about 14 a day and the highest daily rate since the conflict began, including 47 laden outbound tankers and 41 ballast vessels entering the Gulf. That inbound traffic is the detail worth isolating: ballast vessels only enter a conflict zone if owners expect to load and exit safely, which makes it a more forward-looking confidence signal than the outbound export numbers themselves.
Saudi Arabia’s contribution came through a different channel. Kpler data shows Saudi crude exports rose by 768,000 bpd to 4.52 million bpd in June, with weekly exports averaging about 6.3 million bpd – close to January levels – as Riyadh increased loadings from Ras Tanura. During the conflict, both Saudi Arabia and the UAE had leaned on pipelines that bypass Hormuz entirely, an option that was largely unavailable to Iraq and Kuwait, whose export infrastructure runs more directly through the strait. That asymmetry is the structural reason Iraq and Kuwait’s recoveries, at roughly 800,000 bpd each, lagged the Emirati and Saudi rebound: pipeline optionality, not just proximity to shipping lanes, determined how exposed each producer was during the disruption.
Iran’s figures are the most politically loaded of the set. Vortexa estimated Iranian exports rose more than 70% in June to 640,000 bpd as the U.S. blockade eased following the ceasefire agreement. YourDailyAnalysis reads that increase less as a market signal and more as a direct readout of how far U.S. enforcement has actually relaxed since June 17 – Iranian export volumes are, in effect, the most sensitive gauge available of how the ceasefire is being implemented in practice, independent of what either government says publicly about it.
Watch the pace at which the remaining 23-million-barrel backlog clears, and whether tanker traffic through Hormuz keeps climbing toward pre-conflict daily rates. Your Daily Analysis reads the current trajectory as a genuine recovery rather than a one-month bounce, but the 40% gap to year-ago levels is the number that keeps this a recovery story rather than a return-to-normal story – and oil prices easing back toward pre-conflict levels will depend on which of those two narratives the data supports by the end of the third quarter.
