Iran’s Oil Reserves for China Run Dry as US Blockade Tightens
22nd October 2026
Iran has exhausted the offshore oil reserves that sustained its sales to China during the war, according to one energy-data firm, eliminating a critical financial cushion as a U.S. naval blockade intensifies pressure on its struggling economy.
The reserves were fully depleted by mid-October, according to analysts at energy data company Kpler, although other trackers offered varying estimates of the remaining supplies, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.
“There’s no more oil to discharge to China anymore,” Homayoun Falakshahi, Kpler’s head of crude-oil analysis, said.
It was choking off Japan’s imports of oil in the 1930s that caused them to attack Pearl Harbor.
Just sayin’.