Middle East & the Strait of Hormuz.
The Middle Eastern producers are the strait's origin, not its destination. Closure exposure runs through revenue, not consumption: at current Brent, roughly $2 billion of oil transits Hormuz daily, and that flow funds the operating budgets of every Gulf state. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the only producers with material bypass options — Petroline to Yanbu (5 mbpd nameplate) and ADCOP to Fujairah (1.5 mbpd nameplate). Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain have no overland or alternative-coast alternatives. The structural feature of the strait is therefore its mutuality: a closure punishes Tehran almost as fast as Tokyo, which is what makes the threat credible as a coercive lever and unsustainable as an actual posture.
Strait status now
RESTRICTED
Crude imports via Hormuz
0%
Daily import value at risk
0.00 mbpd
at $98.29/bbl Brent
Strategic reserve
n/a
Energy profile
- Oil consumption
- 9.8 mbpd
- Crude imports
- 0 mbpd
- Hormuz crude dependency
- 0%
Top suppliers
- 01Saudi Aramco (production, not import)
- 02ADNOC (UAE)
- 03KOC (Kuwait)
- 04Qatar Energy
- 05NIOC (Iran)
Key facts
- The Gulf states are the *origin* of Hormuz traffic, not destination — exposure runs through revenue, not consumption.
- Roughly 21 million barrels per day of crude, condensate, and refined product transit the strait, valued at ~$2 billion daily at current Brent.
- Qatar is uniquely exposed on the LNG side: nearly all its exports transit Hormuz.
- Saudi Arabia and the UAE have alternative coastal outlets (Yanbu, Fujairah); Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain do not.
- The Petroline (5 mbpd nameplate) and ADCOP (1.5 mbpd nameplate) pipelines bypass the strait but cannot replace its full volume.
Vulnerabilities
- A closure freezes the revenue base of every Gulf producer except partial Saudi and UAE flows via bypass pipelines.
- Iran's economy is the most exposed to its own coercive options: a closure punishes Tehran almost as fast as Tokyo.
- Bahrain, Kuwait, and Qatar have no overland or alternative-coast options.
- Domestic petrochemical and refining clusters depend on the same waterway for both inputs and exports.
Mitigations
- Petroline and ADCOP provide partial bypass capacity (~6.5 mbpd combined nameplate).
- Saudi Arabia's Yanbu (Red Sea) and UAE's Fujairah (Indian Ocean) terminals.
- GCC strategic stockpiles and SPR-equivalents at producer terminals.
- Diversified buyer base — every region in this index buys from these producers.
Historical context
The Tanker War of the 1980s, the 1990 Gulf War, and the 2019 Saudi facility strikes are the historical precedents. Each demonstrated that closure threats are credible but that sustained closures are economically punishing for the threatening party as well as the global economy.