Goldman Sachs: Traffic through the Hormuz has recovered to two-thirds, with 5 million barrels of "dark ships" flowing in daily.

Oil flows in the Strait of Hormuz are recovering, but what the market is seeing is only the tip of the iceberg.

On Wednesday, Goldman Sachs strategist Yulia Zhestkova Grigsby and her team informed clients that Gulf oil exports had rebounded to 15 to 16 million barrels per day, about two-thirds of pre-war levels.

However, shipping data shows a daily flow of only about 10 million barrels, and the 5 million barrel gap between the two is what the team calls the "surge in covert vessel traffic"—tankers are circumventing Iranian tracking and interception by turning off their Automatic Identification System (AIS).

Brent crude oil prices have risen to $95 a barrel, reflecting that the market is pricing in a "no-deal" stalemate in the Middle East as a longer-term benchmark scenario.

Meanwhile, several Trump administration officials have expressed optimism this week about the resumption of oil flows in the Strait of Hormuz, but data from Goldman Sachs reveals that the actual situation is far more complex than the official narrative suggests.

Officials announce "Hormuz's return," but discrepancies in data raise questions.

Senior officials in the Trump administration issued a series of statements this week regarding oil flows in the Strait of Hormuz.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in an interview with CNBC on Monday that more than 17 million barrels of oil per day have passed through this key waterway, the highest level since the start of the six-month conflict.

Trump then announced on Truth Social, "The Hormuz oil levels are back!" Vice President Vance also stated:

15 million barrels left the Strait last night due to US actions.

However, shipping data (calculated using a seven-day moving average) shows a flow of only about 10 million barrels per day, a significant discrepancy from the official figures cited.

The Goldman Sachs team noted in its report that this gap has widened significantly in the past two weeks, mainly due to a large number of oil tankers shutting down their AIS systems as they crossed the strait near the Omani coast.

Based on combined data from undisclosed shipping routes, Goldman Sachs estimates the net impact on Persian Gulf oil flows this week at approximately 7.9 million barrels per day. While this figure still constitutes a significant supply shock, it is considerably smaller than previously perceived based solely on visible shipping data.

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs pointed out that, affected by the Houthi threat, Saudi Arabia has begun to redirect oil flows from Yanbu port back to eastern ports, resulting in a partial hedging effect as Red Sea exports (via the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, the Suez Canal and the SUMED pipeline) decreased by 4.5 million barrels per day in August compared to July.

The surge in dark ships has led to revisions in inventory estimates.

The expansion of the black market has also had a ripple effect on global crude oil inventory data.

Goldman Sachs believes that current inventory readings may be underestimated because high-frequency visible data underestimates the actual amount of crude oil in transit.

After upward revisions, Goldman Sachs estimates that global visible inventories are approximately 39 million barrels higher than the original reading for the same period, with inventory depletion over the past 30 days at a rate of about 2.1 million barrels per day. This implies that the actual supply and demand balance in the oil market may be more relaxed than the apparent data suggests.

The Grigsby team wrote that the disturbances at the Hormuz choke point are forcing Gulf oil producers and shipping companies to adapt faster than Wall Street's tracking models can react— the oil is still flowing, but an increasingly larger proportion is "hidden in the shadows."

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