The core claim is directionally supported by tanker-tracking data and major outlets from late September 2026, but the “94%” figure and the absolute phrasing “lost control” are on the optimistic side.
Alexander Stahel’s post (28 September) argued that Middle East oil exports had recovered to about 94% of baseline because the UAE (ADNOC), then Saudi Aramco and Kuwait, had scaled a “Hormuz Shuttle”: short-haul tankers (often AIS-dark) running the Omani side of the strait under CENTCOM coordination windows, then discharging via ship-to-ship (STS) transfers in the Gulf of Oman so the shuttles can turn around. It also said Iranian loadings at Kharg had largely stopped under the US blockade.
Independent reporting lines up with most of that mechanism:
Kpler, Vortexa and others, cited by the WSJ, FT, NYT and Reuters around 28–29 September, showed regional crude and product exports (Hormuz plus pipeline bypasses) rebounding to roughly 70–80% of pre-war levels in September—commonly cited in the 12.8–15.5 million bpd range versus a pre-war baseline near 17–20 million bpd. Some weekly or late-month Kpler snapshots were higher (one later summary put late-September flows near 92%). Through-strait volumes alone were lower (Kpler ~7–10 million bpd depending on the exact cut; TankerTrackers ~7.4 million). A large share of what moved did so via STS off Fujairah/Sohar rather than normal long-haul voyages.
The shuttle itself is widely described: ADNOC pioneered the short-haul + STS model; Aramco and others copied it after Red Sea/East-West pipeline disruptions (Houthi attacks and strikes on pump stations) forced more volume back through the Gulf. CENTCOM’s role in assigning transit windows and concentrating air/naval cover on the Omani corridor is also reported.
Iranian seaborne exports through the strait were sharply constrained by the US blockade; trackers put Iranian crude outside the blockade line down sharply and projected floating stocks could be largely drawn down by mid-October.
Caveats that keep it from being fully precise:
TankerTrackers replied directly to the post questioning possible double-counting of barrels that appear in both STS transfers and origin loadings, and noting Fujairah pipeline capacity limits, calling the September numbers “way too optimistic.”
The strait was not open in the normal sense. AIS-visible traffic remained a small fraction of pre-war levels because many tankers ran dark; Iran continued to claim authority, blacklist vessels, and conduct or claim attacks; freight and war-risk costs stayed extremely high (figures in the tens of dollars per barrel are consistent with reported shuttle economics). Analysts generally described Iranian leverage as eroding, not gone—danger and cost remained, even if volume had recovered enough to weaken the chokehold.
So the operational story (shuttle scaling, US-facilitated Omani-lane transits, STS bottleneck, Iranian export squeeze) matches contemporary tracker and press accounts. The specific 94% recovery and the flat claim that Iran has “lost control” overstate the degree of normalization relative to the bulk of the September data.