The Trump administration on Wednesday appears to have leaked a story to its favorite Iran war stenographer at Axios that the military has created a secret shipping corridor out of the Strait of Hormuz, helping to escort 15 to 20 oil tankers through the narrow passageway per day.

Axios’ Barak Ravid reported: “The U.S.-led operation is mitigating one of the most painful aspects of the war: the disruption to oil supplies that sent crude prices soaring. While the amount of oil coming out of the strait is still below pre-war levels, it is making a discernible difference in global supplies, officials say.”

U.S. officials claimed to Axios that the operation was allowing the movement of “[a]bout 10 million barrels of oil a day.”

Commodity experts, however, are more than skeptical that this secretive operation has taken place, and wonder if this—like apparent past attempts by the Trump administration—is just an effort to manipulate oil prices to try to bring down the cost of gasoline.

“That’s a lot of oil, and much more than we’re currently seeing,” oil commodity expert Rory Johnson wrote in a post on X on Wednesday, adding that oil trackers have only seen 5 million barrels of oil leaving the strait per day, half of what the government claimed to Axios.

“We’re likely undercounting actual transits, but it feels like a stretch that they’re managing to get *double* that volume out entirely undetected—no sign of loadings, or where these ships may be landing on the other end,” he continued.

Tanker Trackers, a maritime intelligence firm that analyzes the amount of oil being shipped globally, also cast doubt on the Axios report.

“Maybe U.S. officials mean ten million barrels per convoy transfer and not per day. Industry consensus is much lower than that,” the company wrote in a post on X, giving the Trump administration the benefit of the doubt that they do not deserve.

If the Trump administration were using Axios to manipulate the oil markets, it wouldn’t be the first time.

Early on in the war, Ravid frequently reported right before oil futures markets opened that a peace deal was imminent, which would lead oil commodity prices to fall. However, they’d typically spike right back up when it became clear that there was no peace deal to be had.

Nearly six months later, there is still no resolution to the war, with Iranian leaders continuing to use the Strait of Hormuz to inflict pain on the global economy in the hopes they can get Trump to fold on his demands that they drop their nuclear ambitions.

Indeed, as the persistently high price of fuel is spiking inflation, Trump’s approval rating has fallen and is threatening his Republican Party with massive midterm losses.

Even Trump is showing public signs of frustration, threatening to “bomb the shit out of” countries that cross him.

What’s different about Axios’ report now is that it seems traders have wised up to the apparent manipulation efforts.

Oil prices rose again on Thursday. The average price per gallon of gasoline in the U.S. is now at $4.10, according to AAA—up nearly $1 per gallon from a year ago.

Johnson, the oil commodity expert, revisited Axios’ story again on Thursday morning, saying he is even more convinced now that the report isn’t accurate.

“What’s fascinating is just how aligned ~every ship tracker is right now on Hormuz exit flow,” Johnson wrote in a post on X. “There’s a *strong* incentive for someone to break from the pack and to be the tracker who confirms the WH numbers. And yet.”

And yet, indeed.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos