Iran blockade: ‘China can send their ships to us’, Trump pitches US oil exports as global energy crisis deepens

US Naval Forces will enforce a naval blockade around Iran at 7.30 pm IST (10am ET) in a clear escalation of Iran war after the Islamabad ceasefire talks failure. In this, US President Donald Trump is trying to turn the geopolitical crisis into a commercial opportunity- urging oil-hungry nations, and China in particular, to fill their tankers with American crude instead.

"China can send their ships to us. China can send their ships to Venezuela," Trump said on Fox's Sunday Morning Futures.

Trump went further in a Saturday social media post, claiming that “empty Oil carrying ships from many Nations are all heading to the United States of America to LOAD UP with Oil.”

The Strait of Hormuz, meanwhile, normally handles roughly 20 million barrels per day of crude and petroleum products, approximately one fifth of the entire global oil trade. That flow has been halted by the conflict.

The gap between what the US currently exports and what the Strait ordinarily moves is not a rounding error; it is an unbridgeable chasm under present conditions.

Saudi Arabia has been routing some supply via its east–west pipeline to the Red Sea, but only a fraction of the Hormuz volumes are being replaced through that channel. Persian Gulf producers, stripped of their primary export routes, have cut output by an estimated 8–10 million barrels per day.

Refineries around the world are configured to process specific grades of oil. American exporters deal predominantly in lighter grades of crude.

Many Asian refineries are built to handle the heavier grades that Gulf producers supply. Replacing one with the other is not simply a matter of redirecting tankers; it requires either refinery modifications or blending arrangements that take time and capital to establish.

This means that even if American export infrastructure were expanded overnight, a meaningful portion of displaced Gulf supply could not simply be substituted with US crude without significant downstream adjustment.

However, analysts caution against reading too much into short-term weekly figures. The EIA's rapid-turnaround data is, by its own admission, notoriously volatile, and more reliable monthly statistics arrive only after a considerable lag.

Mason Hamilton, a senior researcher with the American Petroleum Institute, noted on X that the broader trend appears real despite the noise in individual data points. "While weekly figures are volatile, multiple sources have reported US product exports increasing to Asia, Africa and other areas," he wrote.

Hamilton also highlighted the increasingly unconventional nature of current trade flows. "Trade flows have also become increasingly atypical, with reports US Gulf Coast gasoline moving to Australia and East Coast jet fuel heading to Europe, highlighting the global pull on US products amid ongoing supply disruptions," he posted — a snapshot of a global energy market being rewired in real time.

If that investment materialises, the US could meaningfully increase its export ceiling over the medium term, not in time to resolve the current crisis, but in a position to exercise greater influence over the next one.