re: follow-up thread on Iran tankers headed to Venezuela

Well as our old friend Lee Corso would say "not so fast my friend"

Having piqued my interest I went back to articles on this shipment. Reports from BBC and others say there is a total of 1.5 Million barrels of basically gasoline on these five ships combined, not 6.8 million bbls. That seems to be where our numbers diverge. Gas is close to 6 Lb per gallon, or say 250 Lb/BBL or 8.8 bbl per MT.

BBC

This should equate to roughly 375 Million pounds (of gasoline) which would roughly equal 180000 tons US total, or about 170500 Metric Tonnes. Still a far cry from the over 900,000 MT figure used. So, that still leaves us with quite a disparity with the figure used in your post. Would still make quite a mess but not quite the catastrophic situation described.

On the other hand I now find it conceivable, but not necessarily likely, that military intervention could be used under the Iran sanctions. Those sanctions could provide some basis for direct action including blockade, embargo, boarding, confiscation or worse. Hopefully, rational behavior by all parties will wiggle out of this without too much damage done other than political embarrassment. Too close to election time to start throwing gas on the fire, so to speak.