Iran’s oil exports have collapsed since the US naval blockade began on April 13, with daily loadings falling from 2.1 million barrels to 567,000 barrels, according to tanker-tracking firm Kpler. Onshore storage and tankers in Iranian waters are filling up, and the government has begun cutting oil production.
An Iran Open Data analysis of OPEC trade data, Central Bank of Iran reserve figures, Kpler shipping data, and Ministry of Labor employment assessments finds the blockade has severed roughly half of Iran’s foreign currency earnings while leaving reserves sufficient for about one year of imports.
Iran’s oil and refined product exports were worth $45 billion last year, or 42% of total exports, according to OPEC. Adding $10 billion in annual liquefied petroleum gas exports, hydrocarbons account for half of all Iranian exports.
The disruption extends beyond oil. About 70% of Iran’s non-oil trade passes through Persian Gulf ports, for which no viable alternative exists. Israeli strikes on petrochemical and steel complexes have disrupted domestic supply, and Iran has halted petrochemical and steel exports that previously generated $20 billion annually in foreign currency.
Excluding oil, petroleum products, LPG, steel, and petrochemicals, Iran’s annual goods exports fall to roughly $30 billion, barely one-third of the country’s imports. The services trade balance, already deeply negative, worsens the gap.
Currency and import pressure
Iran imports $17 billion of food, agricultural goods, and medicine annually, funded in recent years through a preferential exchange rate of 28,500 tomans sourced from oil revenues, according to UN Food and Agriculture Organization data.
The dollar-to-rial exchange rate has risen 20% over the past week, reaching approximately 1.9 million rials.
The government can no longer supply preferential foreign currency for essential imports, and food prices, already running at 115% inflation, are expected to accelerate.
The CBI and National Development Fund hold $61 billion in combined manageable foreign exchange reserves, according to the Foreign Exchange Reserve Funds platform. That sum covers approximately one year of imports.
Storage runway abroad
Iran holds approximately 180 million barrels of oil afloat in East Asia, particularly near China, Malaysia, and Singapore, according to Kpler. That floating inventory can continue supplying Chinese customers for several months. If the blockade persists beyond that window, oil revenues will be cut off entirely.
Daily Iranian oil offloading at Chinese ports fell to 1.16 million barrels over the past month, down 30% from March, Kpler data showed. The Ministry of Labor estimates the recent war has cost one million jobs and left two million people unemployed.
The blockade compresses Iran’s foreign currency pipeline on multiple fronts at once: hydrocarbon revenues halted at the source, non-oil trade routed through closed Persian Gulf ports, and damaged petrochemical and steel capacity removed from the export base. With reserves covering roughly twelve months of imports and the preferential currency mechanism for food and medicine no longer functional, the runway depends on how quickly stored oil in East Asia clears and whether Chinese offloading recovers.
The original article was published on Iran Open Data Center