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The world’s shipping chokepoints, compared.

The Strait of Hormuz is the most important oil chokepoint, but not the only one. Six narrow passages carry most of the world’s seaborne energy and a large share of its containers. Here is how they compare, and what changes when one of them tightens.

Strait of Hormuz

~21Mbpd

1H25 · EIA · total liquids

Iran ↔ Oman (Musandam)

What flowsSaudi, UAE, Iraqi, Kuwaiti, Iranian, and Qatari crude, condensate, products + LNG

AlternativePetroline, ADCOP, Goreh-Jask pipelines combined ~7M bpd of crude. The rest strands.

Why it mattersThe single most important oil chokepoint in the world. Roughly a fifth of global petroleum consumption, a quarter of seaborne oil trade, and a quarter of LNG. The ~21M bpd shown here is total liquids (crude, condensate, and products); the ~17M bpd cited elsewhere on the site is crude and condensate alone. No alternative for LNG; partial alternative for crude.

Strait of Malacca

~23Mbpd

1H25 · EIA · total liquids

Malaysia / Indonesia / Singapore

What flowsMiddle East crude bound for China, Japan, Korea + container traffic for the entire Asia-Pacific

AlternativeLombok and Sunda straits: longer routes, smaller width, congestion.

Why it mattersAsia's primary oil import gateway and the highest-volume chokepoint of the six. A Malacca disruption is the only chokepoint event that could exceed Hormuz in immediate Asian demand impact.

Suez Canal + SUMED

~5Mbpd

1H25 · EIA · total liquids

Egypt

What flowsCrude + product from the Gulf to Europe and the US East Coast; Asia–Europe container traffic

AlternativeCape of Good Hope: adds ~14 days per leg, the same detour Hormuz forces.

Why it mattersFlows ran ~9M bpd in 2023 and roughly halved once Bab el-Mandeb risk pushed traffic to the Cape. A bilateral disruption with Hormuz makes the Cape the only Asia–Europe option, contracting global fleet capacity.

Bab el-Mandeb

~4Mbpd

1H25 · EIA · total liquids

Yemen / Djibouti / Eritrea

What flowsEverything heading north toward Suez

AlternativeCape of Good Hope (same as Suez disruption)

Why it mattersThe southern gateway to the Red Sea, down from ~9M bpd in 2023 under Houthi attack risk. When Bab el-Mandeb is unsafe, Suez is functionally unreachable from the south, which is why Hormuz traffic in 2024+ has skipped Suez entirely.

Turkish Straits

~3.7Mbpd

1H25 · EIA · total liquids

Turkey (Bosporus + Dardanelles)

What flowsRussian, Kazakh, and Caucasus crude from Black Sea ports (about 60% crude)

AlternativePipelines (BTC, Druzhba) carry some volume; rest is stranded.

Why it mattersConstrained by the 1936 Montreux Convention. A persistent disruption hits Black Sea-origin crude flows hardest.

Panama Canal

~2.3Mbpd

FY25 · EIA · total liquids

Panama

What flowsAtlantic ↔ Pacific traffic, overwhelmingly refined products (US and Latin American cargoes); minor crude route

AlternativeAround Cape Horn: multi-week detour at brutal latitudes.

Why it mattersAbout 3% of global maritime petroleum flows, mostly products, but central to container shipping between Asia and the US East Coast. Drought-driven low water levels have already constrained capacity in recent years.

Historical comparison

How this Hormuz closure compares to past oil shocks.

Five disruptions in the last fifty years are the natural reference points. None map perfectly (Hormuz 2026 is the only event combining a hot-war chokepoint closure with no LNG alternative), but each frames an axis along which this closure is unfolding.

Strait of Hormuz closure

+52%

2026 (ongoing)

DurationOngoing

Trade impact~17M bpd crude exposed (~10M net after bypass) · ~25% global LNG

TakeawayLargest live chokepoint disruption since the Tanker War. No alternative for LNG; pipelines absorb only ~40% of crude. Cape detour adds 14 days per leg.

Red Sea / Bab el-Mandeb (Houthi attacks)

+5–8%

late 2023–present

DurationOngoing risk

Trade impact~15% global container traffic rerouted

TakeawayContainer carriers diverted Asia–Europe to the Cape; oil largely unaffected because Suez had Cape and Hormuz had no parallel disruption then. Set the playbook for the current Cape-only routing.

Suez Canal blockage (Ever Given)

+4%

2021

Duration6 days

Trade impact~12% global trade delayed

TakeawaySingle-vessel grounding, not a security event. Showed how quickly chokepoint disruption ripples through schedules, and how shallow the price impact is when alternatives exist.

Iraqi invasion of Kuwait

+130%

1990–1991

Duration~7 months

Trade impact~4.6M bpd offline

TakeawayBrent doubled within weeks on the loss of Kuwaiti supply and risk to Saudi exports; tapered after Coalition airstrikes confirmed Saudi infrastructure was untouched. Nearest historical analog for a hot-war Gulf disruption.

Iran–Iraq Tanker War

+15–25%

1984–1988

Duration~4 years

Trade impact~2% of Gulf tankers damaged or lost

TakeawaySustained low-level attacks on tankers in the Gulf without closing the Strait. War-risk insurance multiples and reflagging operations were invented here: the institutional memory underwriters draw on today.

OPEC oil embargo

+300%

1973–1974

Duration~5 months

Trade impact~7.5% global supply withheld

TakeawayPolitically engineered, not a chokepoint event. Largest post-war oil-price shock; reshaped global energy policy and IEA stockholding rules. Floor for what a deliberate supply withdrawal looks like.

Historical figures: EIA, IEA, and BP Statistical Review of World Energy.

Why Hormuz is the worst chokepoint to lose.

The other passages have alternatives. Malacca-bound traffic can route around the south of Indonesia. Suez can be replaced by the Cape detour. Bab el-Mandeb sits in the same chain as Suez. The Turkish Straits have land pipelines for some volume. The Panama Canal has Cape Horn (no one likes this option, but it exists).

Hormuz is unique in the combination of three properties: it carries the largest single absolute volume of seaborne oil, it is the only export route for Qatari LNG, and its alternatives (Petroline, ADCOP, Goreh-Jask) cover only about 40% of normal throughput. There is no Cape-equivalent workaround. When Hormuz closes, the missing barrels and missing LNG cargoes have nowhere to go.

Compounding chokepoint risk.

When multiple chokepoints are simultaneously restricted, the effect is multiplicative rather than additive. Houthi disruption in the Red Sea / Bab el-Mandeb meant Suez was already a non-option for Gulf-origin cargoes well before the current Hormuz closure; container carriers had routed Asia–Europe via the Cape for months.

With Hormuz closed, the residual via Suez path that might have absorbed some Gulf cargoes was already gone. This is the structural reason the current closure has bitten harder than the 2019 Hormuz incidents: the second alternative was missing on day one.

What we watch.

On Straits, the indicators that capture chokepoint stress show up in the Assessment grid: transit count, throughput percentage, the carrier-suspension grid, and war-risk insurance. Lloyd’s JWC tracks listed areas across multiple chokepoints simultaneously; when two or more are listed, the fleet’s effective capacity contracts faster than any single closure would suggest.

Sources & further reading

← Back to live trackerCape reroute →LNG supply →War-risk insurance →Oil price impact →Pipelines →