**Yes, there are significantly elevated levels of tankers headed to the U.S. Gulf Coast**, with **around 171 crude oil tankers en route** as of mid-April 2026—well above the typical monthly average of about 110. This surge is driven by global supply disruptions, particularly rerouting around the **Strait of Hormuz** due to geopolitical tensions, prompting Asian and European buyers to seek stable U.S. crude supplies.
**Crude oil exports are at record levels**, with loadings tracking near **4.9 million barrels per day (mbpd) in April** and projected to **exceed 5 mbpd in May 2026**—the highest sustained levels on record. The influx includes **28 Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs)** contracted for May, compared to a normal average of five per month, signaling strong demand and tighter tanker availability.
Key contributing factors:
* **Geopolitical avoidance**: Traders and shipowners are bypassing the Strait of Hormuz due to safety and insurance concerns.
* **U.S. as swing supplier**: The U.S. is positioning as a reliable global energy provider amid Middle East instability.
* **Commercial, not political**: The rerouting is primarily driven by risk management, not a coordinated geopolitical strategy
FuttleScish on
Yes and that’s bad if you live in the US
Dyn-O-mite_Rocketeer on
About 70 VLCCs or very large crude carriers (~2 million barrels each) are en route to the US right now according to Kpler. Picture a long chain of ships stretching from the US Gulf Coast all the way across the Atlantic down to the Cape of Good Hope off South Africa and into the Indian Ocean. Basically the only thing limiting US crude exports is dock capacity.
RichIndependence8930 on
Yeah, right in time for hurricane season too.
grogi81 on
A little. There is recent increase of oil exports from ~4mln to ~5mln barrels per day.
There are however limitations of how much more the US can service: only Louisiana Offshore Oil Port can fully load the biggest tankers, called VLCCs. Even if more tankers show up, there is no more oil that US can load onto them…
r2k-in-the-vortex on
Yeah it sort of it. But where is the oil to fill them coming from? Lmao, from SPR, not from increased production.
US is peddling off it’s emergency reserves to make the prices look pretty.
tellmemorelies on
**Daily Deficit:** The U.S. consumes around 20 million barrels of oil per day (mbpd), while producing about 13–13.5 mbpd of crude oil.
Efficient-Big-1848 on
SimCity President
Technical_Purple_847 on
Yes, there are ships coming to the US that wouldn’t normally come to the US. I believe that most/all of them are VLCC ships.
Numbers are a little bit hazy but I’ve seen multiple sources that put it over 50 but under 100, normally right around 70 but that number could increase or decrease at any time I think.
I think the general idea is to supplement both Europe and Asia with these tankers but the majority will be going to Asia.
For the fellas that are still trying to figure out how to eat crayons:
Europe doesn’t have many crayons left but they have more money to buy crayons than the poor kids
China likes crayons a lot and has more than any of the other kids right now. Almost 1/3 of all the crayons in the class and they still won’t sell crayons to the rich kids in Europe
India and Japan and all of South and SE Asia eat lots of crayons(cook with crayons) and are worried they will be hungry soon. India is a big kid and he can get hangry too
Iran somehow figured out a way to sneak a metal bat into the school that was sitting in their backpack.
The US has been kind of bullying Iran for years and keeps going in with the same strategy. They tickle Iran and then when Iran isn’t looking, they nab a bunch of crayons and take the bat too!
Iran caught on and they decided it’s their time. They whip out the bat and go berserk. They are smashing all of the Middle East’s crayons and desks and they kick everybody out of the room except for the other ME kids. Now Iran is standing at the door with a bat but Israel, the US, Europe, and everybody else wants to get inside to get their god damn crayons.
Everybody knows it’s a US-Israel-Iran crayon beef and they are known as the kids that always whine when they don’t get their way. So everybody else is just trying to tell both sides, “Guys, we like both of you and we just want to go inside and eat our crayons.” The Middle East kids in particular are starting to think that they are a little scared of Iran. They think the US is the coolest kid in class but the UAE is thinking to themselves that if they get hit with a bat too many more times, they might just die. They even asked the US for some money at a time like this when the US doesn’t even have enough crayons.
Now that we understand the crayon eating children in our world, we need to understand the real adults in the room. The teachers so lovingly help the flow of crayons by buying them off of Middle Eastern kids that aren’t allowed to eat because of Ramadan. The kids are given money and they buy everything they want like my sports teams because they are richer than God. The teachers turn around and sell it to all the crayon guzzling white kids. If the teachers are good with business and even a little bit lucky, they make a small profit on every crayon they sell.
When Iran whipped out a bat, the teachers got really scared and said they weren’t really comfortable buying from the ME kids. The ME kids are now annoyed because they are being held hostage in a room by a metal bat along with the fact that their desks are literally completely full. All of their money is generated by their magical desks that spawn crayons but they don’t work when full. So now they are all annoyed, hungry, and sad that their magic desks are full of crayons with no teachers to buy them. It will take months for the teachers to buy up their current stock too.
Part of the issue though is that it doesn’t matter that 20% of the magic desks were taken offline and the teachers are scared of Iran. All of the kids are still getting hungry at the same rate for crayons that are becoming more and more scarce. The kids are buying from teachers and kids that weren’t normally their source but they are all starting to charge a higher price as their stocks get lower. The US knows the principal so they secured a month of extra crayons that came out of the secret closet that is marked “FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY”.
The US has also decided that no time is better than the present for some more money. So the second they got those crayons, they sent word to teachers across the school that they can fill up on crayons. It will take weeks for it to happen but they are slowly making their way to the US pod of their school and will get there in 2-3 weeks I think.
To make matters worse, the US is starting to get pissed that Iran won’t get out of the door. They even threatened to bring a space heater to school the other day if Iran doesn’t back off. If it gets bad enough, the US is willing to melt Iran’s crayons. At this point, we are just hoping for no crayons to be melted and to get the teachers moving again. Every day that the magical desks aren’t producing crayons is going to be hungrier kids
Does this meet our high quality standards? It has no AI, not sure if that makes this better or worse. I might be able to offer sources but that’s mostly just off the dome tbh
11 Comments
No
Deleted in 5, 4, 3, 2
**Yes, there are significantly elevated levels of tankers headed to the U.S. Gulf Coast**, with **around 171 crude oil tankers en route** as of mid-April 2026—well above the typical monthly average of about 110. This surge is driven by global supply disruptions, particularly rerouting around the **Strait of Hormuz** due to geopolitical tensions, prompting Asian and European buyers to seek stable U.S. crude supplies.
**Crude oil exports are at record levels**, with loadings tracking near **4.9 million barrels per day (mbpd) in April** and projected to **exceed 5 mbpd in May 2026**—the highest sustained levels on record. The influx includes **28 Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs)** contracted for May, compared to a normal average of five per month, signaling strong demand and tighter tanker availability.
Key contributing factors:
* **Geopolitical avoidance**: Traders and shipowners are bypassing the Strait of Hormuz due to safety and insurance concerns.
* **U.S. as swing supplier**: The U.S. is positioning as a reliable global energy provider amid Middle East instability.
* **Commercial, not political**: The rerouting is primarily driven by risk management, not a coordinated geopolitical strategy
Yes and that’s bad if you live in the US
About 70 VLCCs or very large crude carriers (~2 million barrels each) are en route to the US right now according to Kpler. Picture a long chain of ships stretching from the US Gulf Coast all the way across the Atlantic down to the Cape of Good Hope off South Africa and into the Indian Ocean. Basically the only thing limiting US crude exports is dock capacity.
Yeah, right in time for hurricane season too.
A little. There is recent increase of oil exports from ~4mln to ~5mln barrels per day.
There are however limitations of how much more the US can service: only Louisiana Offshore Oil Port can fully load the biggest tankers, called VLCCs. Even if more tankers show up, there is no more oil that US can load onto them…
Yeah it sort of it. But where is the oil to fill them coming from? Lmao, from SPR, not from increased production.
US is peddling off it’s emergency reserves to make the prices look pretty.
**Daily Deficit:** The U.S. consumes around 20 million barrels of oil per day (mbpd), while producing about 13–13.5 mbpd of crude oil.
SimCity President
Yes, there are ships coming to the US that wouldn’t normally come to the US. I believe that most/all of them are VLCC ships.
Numbers are a little bit hazy but I’ve seen multiple sources that put it over 50 but under 100, normally right around 70 but that number could increase or decrease at any time I think.
I think the general idea is to supplement both Europe and Asia with these tankers but the majority will be going to Asia.
For the fellas that are still trying to figure out how to eat crayons:
Europe doesn’t have many crayons left but they have more money to buy crayons than the poor kids
China likes crayons a lot and has more than any of the other kids right now. Almost 1/3 of all the crayons in the class and they still won’t sell crayons to the rich kids in Europe
India and Japan and all of South and SE Asia eat lots of crayons(cook with crayons) and are worried they will be hungry soon. India is a big kid and he can get hangry too
Iran somehow figured out a way to sneak a metal bat into the school that was sitting in their backpack.
The US has been kind of bullying Iran for years and keeps going in with the same strategy. They tickle Iran and then when Iran isn’t looking, they nab a bunch of crayons and take the bat too!
Iran caught on and they decided it’s their time. They whip out the bat and go berserk. They are smashing all of the Middle East’s crayons and desks and they kick everybody out of the room except for the other ME kids. Now Iran is standing at the door with a bat but Israel, the US, Europe, and everybody else wants to get inside to get their god damn crayons.
Everybody knows it’s a US-Israel-Iran crayon beef and they are known as the kids that always whine when they don’t get their way. So everybody else is just trying to tell both sides, “Guys, we like both of you and we just want to go inside and eat our crayons.” The Middle East kids in particular are starting to think that they are a little scared of Iran. They think the US is the coolest kid in class but the UAE is thinking to themselves that if they get hit with a bat too many more times, they might just die. They even asked the US for some money at a time like this when the US doesn’t even have enough crayons.
Now that we understand the crayon eating children in our world, we need to understand the real adults in the room. The teachers so lovingly help the flow of crayons by buying them off of Middle Eastern kids that aren’t allowed to eat because of Ramadan. The kids are given money and they buy everything they want like my sports teams because they are richer than God. The teachers turn around and sell it to all the crayon guzzling white kids. If the teachers are good with business and even a little bit lucky, they make a small profit on every crayon they sell.
When Iran whipped out a bat, the teachers got really scared and said they weren’t really comfortable buying from the ME kids. The ME kids are now annoyed because they are being held hostage in a room by a metal bat along with the fact that their desks are literally completely full. All of their money is generated by their magical desks that spawn crayons but they don’t work when full. So now they are all annoyed, hungry, and sad that their magic desks are full of crayons with no teachers to buy them. It will take months for the teachers to buy up their current stock too.
Part of the issue though is that it doesn’t matter that 20% of the magic desks were taken offline and the teachers are scared of Iran. All of the kids are still getting hungry at the same rate for crayons that are becoming more and more scarce. The kids are buying from teachers and kids that weren’t normally their source but they are all starting to charge a higher price as their stocks get lower. The US knows the principal so they secured a month of extra crayons that came out of the secret closet that is marked “FOR EMERGENCIES ONLY”.
The US has also decided that no time is better than the present for some more money. So the second they got those crayons, they sent word to teachers across the school that they can fill up on crayons. It will take weeks for it to happen but they are slowly making their way to the US pod of their school and will get there in 2-3 weeks I think.
To make matters worse, the US is starting to get pissed that Iran won’t get out of the door. They even threatened to bring a space heater to school the other day if Iran doesn’t back off. If it gets bad enough, the US is willing to melt Iran’s crayons. At this point, we are just hoping for no crayons to be melted and to get the teachers moving again. Every day that the magical desks aren’t producing crayons is going to be hungrier kids
Does this meet our high quality standards? It has no AI, not sure if that makes this better or worse. I might be able to offer sources but that’s mostly just off the dome tbh