Iran's floating oil stockpile is "completely gone," Fox News reports
Fox Business correspondent Lauren Simonetti cites shipping data and satellite images of an empty Kharg Island to argue that the U.S. blockade near the Strait of Hormuz is working.
Why this story? One of Fox News's most watched videos since yesterday, with 102,480 views.
'COMPLETELY GONE': Iran's oil reserves reportedly DEPLETED
The oil in question was never in the ground. According to Fox News' report on America Reports, the stockpile Iran had kept on tankers in Asian waters, the cargo of its so-called shadow fleet, has run out under a months-long U.S. blockade of Iranian ports.
Anchor Sandra Smith introduces the segment, and Fox Business correspondent Lauren Simonetti picks it up from New York with data from the commodities analytics firm Kpler. "Iran will make no money selling oil by the middle of December," she says, and calls the blockade "working."
A map shows the blockade line near the Strait of Hormuz cutting Iran's ports off from the sea. Satellite images of Kharg Island, the terminal that handles most of Iran's crude exports, compare an earlier view with a recent one in which no vessels are seen. Simonetti's explanation is a plain one: "They can't pick up oil if there's no ships there."
Archive clips bring in Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who says loadings at Kharg Island are at "a virtual standstill" and describes the aim as severing "every economic lifeline that sustains this tyrannical regime." Iran, he says, is in "economic death throes."
The report closes closer to home, with national average fuel prices on screen, diesel above six dollars a gallon, before Simonetti hands back to the studio.
The short segment drew about 100,000 views in its first hours, making it the second most watched of Fox News' new videos since yesterday. Much of the comment section turns on the sourcing behind the title's "reportedly."
Published on Trari
Where next?
- Channel
- Fox News
- Subscribers
- 15,500,000
- Channel views, last 7 days
- 113,194,889
- Channel views, pace per day
- 14,079,575 (on a normal day: 14,473,274)
- Video published
- October 23, 2026
- Video views so far
- 102,480 (less than a day online)
The numbers
The segment drew a fast early audience for a short business report, alongside a busy midterm-politics slate on the channel.
💡 Test your knowledge
Larry Kudlow, who appears in the report's archive footage, headed which White House office during Donald Trump's first term?
Kudlow served as director of the National Economic Council from 2018 to 2021.



