Energy Mechanics · World oil transit chokepoints

Where global oil trade
narrows to a few ships wide

SEABORNE OIL · MMBPD · GEOGRAPHIC SPOFs
RELEASE · EIA WORLD OIL TRANSIT CHOKEPOINTS
VINTAGE · ANNUAL · LATEST EIA ESTIMATE
FLOW UNITS · MILLION BARRELS / DAY
STATUS · SEED
Around ~60% of global oil consumption moves by sea. Seven geographic chokepoints — narrow straits, canals, and capes where ship traffic concentrates by an order of magnitude — carry the bulk of it. The Strait of Hormuz is the single biggest single-point-of-failure: ~21 mmbpd flows through 21 nautical miles of water bordered by Iran. Malacca (Singapore–Indonesia) is the busiest by tonnage. Both are operationally constrained: limited tanker width, no economic detour, and routing around them adds 1–3 weeks of voyage time.
Critical (no real detour) High-traffic (detour adds 2-4 wks) Moderate (alt routes available) bar length ∝ mmbpd transiting · annual EIA estimate
CHOKEPOINT · MMBPD GEOGRAPHY & STRATEGIC NOTE Strait of Malacca — SINGAPORE / INDONESIA / MALAYSIA ~580 mi long, ~1.7 mi wide at narrowest. Busiest by tonnage.Detour via Sunda/Lombok adds ~3 days. Strait of Hormuz — IRAN / OMAN · PERSIAN GULF EXIT 21 nm wide. ~30% of seaborne crude. Every Gulf producer depends on it(Saudi / Iraq / UAE / Kuwait / Qatar / Bahrain). No viable detour. Suez Canal + SUMED pipeline — EGYPT · MEDITERRANEAN ↔ RED SEA Canal + parallel pipeline. Cape of Good Hope reroute adds 10-14 days.2021 Ever Given grounding cost ~$9B in held trade. Bab el-Mandeb — YEMEN / DJIBOUTI · RED SEA EXIT 18 mi wide. Houthi missile/drone strikes since 2024 force most tankersaround Cape — adding $1-2/bbl in freight. Cape of Good Hope — SOUTH AFRICA · NOT A CHOKEPOINT Listed for context — the natural detour for Suez and Bab el-Mandeb.Flows here surge whenever Red Sea is unsafe. Turkish (Bosphorus) Straits — TURKEY · BLACK SEA ↔ MEDITERRANEAN ~0.5 mi wide. Russia + Caspian crude exit. Subject to Turkishnavigation regs and weather closures. Panama Canal — PANAMA · ATLANTIC ↔ PACIFIC Lock-based; drought (2023-24) cut daily transits.Refined products + LPG dominate; less crude. Σ HORMUZ + MALACCA = — mmbpd · RED SEA ROUTE (SUEZ + BAB) = — mmbpd
Hormuz throughput
—
mmbpd · ~30% of seaborne crude
Total chokepoint flows
—
mmbpd · sum of 6 transit chokepoints (excl. Cape)
Hormuz % of seaborne
—
of ~70 mmbpd seaborne oil trade
Red Sea reroute cost
10-14 days
added voyage around Cape of Good Hope
SOURCE · U.S. Energy Information Administration, World Oil Transit Chokepoints (annual report, latest estimate). Volumes are total crude + petroleum products including LNG where applicable. The "% of seaborne" framing uses Lloyd's Marine Intelligence Unit estimates of total seaborne oil trade. Hormuz exposure is structural: every major Persian Gulf producer (Saudi Arabia, Iraq, UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain) ships through it, and the alternative pipelines (Saudi East-West, UAE Habshan-Fujairah, Iraq-Turkey) collectively bypass ~7 mmbpd at most — well under half of typical Hormuz flow. The 2026 closure scenario discussed in the Adkins/Raymond James presentation assumes ~13.5 mmbpd shut-in (~2/3 of normal Hormuz volume), making it the largest single supply interruption in 80 years — 3× the 1979 Iranian Revolution in absolute terms, 2× as a share of global production.
SECOND·ORDER·EDGE