The Trump Administration says more oil exited the Middle East this week than before the Iran war, but the data says otherwise

U.S.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright raised eyebrows in energy markets Wednesday when he said more oil exports left the Middle East on Monday—between the Strait of Hormuz and alternative routes—than before the beginning of the Iran war.

While crude oil exports have indeed risen in recent weeks—at least until an escalation of U.S. and Iranian attacks on Tuesday that slowed exports yet again—analytics firms that track tanker traffic rebutted Wright’s claims.

As the U.S. has worked to carve out a path for oil tankers that hews closer to Oman, more oil shippers are using smaller tankers to move through the narrow Strait of Hormuz and then transferring their volumes to larger tankers in the broader Arabian Sea , a process called ship-to-ship transfers.

That process can be time consuming over days, and it appears that Wright is adding up transfers over multiple days into a single day, said Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, jokingly calling it “mathemagics.” Here’s what Wright initially had to say during an interview with CNBC: “Monday was our record ever through, since the conflict began.

Over 17 million barrels of oil flowed through the Strait of Hormuz on ships on Monday.

If you add the bypass export pipelines, more than left the region [than] in the pre-conflict.” Prior to the war, nearly 15 million barrels of crude oil routinely trekked the Strait of Hormuz—about 20 million barrels including other petroleum products.

Wright seems to be counting products too.

And, in terms of Wright’s mention of “bypass export pipelines,” Saudi Arabia, most notably, is now exporting between 3 million and 4 million barrels of oil each day through the Red Sea—which is under threat by the Yemeni Houthis—or the more circuitous Suez Canal.

Taking Wright’s word for it, that would indeed put traffic back above pre-war levels, including the Red Sea and Suez Canal volumes.

But Mandani told Fortune the data says otherwise, although the past seven days of traffic are higher than the 28-day average.

On Monday, Aug.

31, Mandani said an estimated 9.14 million barrels of oil exited the Arabian Sea—including volumes through Hormuz and the United Arab Emirates’ bypass volumes from the Gulf of Oman.

That was in fact one of the highest days of traffic of late, he said, but still well below pre-war volumes.