Iran Cuts Oil Exports From its Jask Terminal

Iran appears to have halted or heavily cut back crude oil exports from its Single Buoy Mooring (SBM) off the Kooh Mobarak oil storage facility. The Kooh Mobarak SBM, 30 nautical miles west of Bandar-e Jask, is Iran’s only point of export outside the Gulf, and does not require passage through the Straits of Hormuz. It was designed specifically to permit continued exports if ever the Straits of Hormuz were closed to shipping, and to exploit saved tanker sailing days when compared with having to load at the nation's primary terminal at Kharg Island.

Throughout September, there was usually an Aframax or VLCC tanker moored at the buoy, where tankers appear to take about two days to load 2 million barrels of heavy crude. The last such sighting at the SBM appears to have been on October 4. 

The Kooh Mobarak storage facility and SBM were opened in July 2021 by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who was criticized in the Iranian parliament for damaging the pipeline by rushing its opening in the last days of his presidency before testing had been completed. Shortages of capital had delayed the full commissioning of the 1000-kilometer 42-inch pipeline, which brings oil from the crude collection point at Goreh in Bushehr Province. Even now, only 10 of the 20 storage tanks at Kooh Mobarak appear to have been completed. 

The project was supposed to ramp up steadily to reach one million bpd by March 2022, using three SBMs. In practice, for most of 2021 and 2022 the facility - when it was operational and not under repair - was loading 300,000 bpd through one SBM, primarily servicing Medium Range tankers used for short-range shipments to the Indian subcontinent.

Contrary to the notion that Kooh Mobarak would be able to continue operations in time of tension because it is located in the Gulf of Oman, the reality has been that it is more vulnerable to interdiction and to unmanned surveillance operations - for example, the monitoring missions carried out by the US Navy’s Task Force 59.  In June 2021, the Iranian Navy’s logistics vessel IRINS Kharg (K431) caught fire and sank off Jask close by in mysterious circumstances.