Iraq Shifts Oil Strategy By Arranging Tanker To Move Past Hormuz

By Salma El Wardany

Oct 4, 2026 (Bloomberg) –Iraq’s state tanker company arranged a very large crude carrier to transport 2 million barrels beyond the Strait of Hormuz, marking a move toward offering oil outside the Persian Gulf.

Iraqi Oil Tankers Co. loaded a VLCC and arranged for it to sail through the strait “for the first time in decades,” Director General Ali Qais Abdul Jabbar said in video comments published on the Oil Ministry’s Facebook page. Previously, buyers would have arranged for supertankers to collect Iraqi crude at Basra, near the head of the Persian Gulf.

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