Why is the Strait of Hormuz important? Oil's chokepoint

The Strait of Hormuz is important because it is the only sea route out of the Persian Gulf, where some of the world's largest oil and gas exporters sit. In 2024 about 20 million barrels of oil a day passed through it, equal to roughly a fifth of the world's oil consumption, along with about a fifth of the world's trade in liquefied natural gas. Pipelines can carry only a small part of that around it, which is why trouble in the strait moves energy prices everywhere.

In short

• The strait is about 33 kilometers wide at its narrowest, between Iran and Oman, with shipping lanes about 3 kilometers wide in each direction.
• In 2024 it carried about 20% of global oil consumption and about 20% of global LNG trade, most of it bound for Asia.
• Bypass pipelines in Saudi Arabia and the UAE had only about 2.6 million barrels a day of spare room, a small fraction of normal flows.

Where is the Strait of Hormuz, and how narrow is it?

The strait links the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. Iran lies on its northern shore. The tip of the Musandam Peninsula, which belongs to Oman, lies on its southern side. At its narrowest point it is about 21 miles, or 33 kilometers, wide, but ships don't use all of that: the inbound and outbound shipping lanes are each about 2 miles wide, separated by a 2-mile buffer, as Scientific American reported in 2014, quoting the EIA.

The water is deep enough for the largest crude oil tankers, which is part of why so much passes through. A place like this is called a chokepoint: a narrow channel on a busy sea route where a blockage, even a brief one, delays supplies and raises shipping costs. Some chokepoints can be avoided by sailing the long way around. Hormuz has no long way around: for most of the oil and gas inside the Gulf, it is the only exit by sea.

How much oil and gas goes through it?

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the statistics arm of the U.S. Department of Energy, tracks tanker movements through the strait. Its 2025 analysis found that in 2024:

• Oil flows averaged 20 million barrels a day, about 20% of world petroleum consumption and more than a quarter of all oil traded by sea.
• About a fifth of the world's liquefied natural gas (LNG), gas cooled into a liquid for shipping, passed through, most of it from Qatar.
• Saudi Arabia was the largest single source, shipping 5.5 million barrels a day of crude, 38% of the total.

Kuwait, Iraq, the UAE, Iran, Qatar and Bahrain also ship through it. Several of these countries are members of OPEC, the group of oil exporters that coordinates production. The oil itself comes from some of the largest fields on Earth, formed in the way described in how oil is formed.

Who depends on it?

Mostly Asia. The EIA estimates that 84% of the crude oil and 83% of the LNG moving through Hormuz in 2024 went to Asian markets. China, India, Japan and South Korea together took 69% of its crude oil. The United States took about 0.5 million barrels a day through the strait in 2024, about 7% of its crude imports and 2% of its oil consumption, the lowest level of imports from the Gulf in nearly 40 years.

That doesn't mean a closure barely touches countries that buy little Gulf oil. Oil is traded on a world market, so its price is set worldwide. If 20% of supply is stuck, buyers everywhere bid for what is left, and fuel prices rise in Texas as well as Tokyo. Higher energy costs then feed into the prices of transport, food and goods, which is why oil shocks are tied so closely to inflation.

Can oil get around the strait?

Only some of it. Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline runs 5 million barrels a day from near the Gulf coast to the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea; in 2019 it was temporarily expanded to 7 million. The UAE has a 1.8 million barrel-a-day pipeline to Fujairah, a terminal on the Gulf of Oman outside the strait. Iran opened a pipeline to Jask on the Gulf of Oman in 2021, but its usable capacity is around 300,000 barrels a day, and it stopped loading cargoes after September 2024.

Because the Saudi and UAE pipelines already carry oil every day, the EIA estimated that only about 2.6 million barrels a day of spare capacity could be switched to them in an emergency. A simple sum shows the gap:

	Barrels a day
Normal flow through Hormuz, 2024	20 million
Spare bypass pipeline capacity	about 2.6 million
Left with no route out	about 17.4 million

On those figures, the pipelines could rescue about 13% of normal flows (2.6 ÷ 20). Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain have no pipeline route around the strait at all. Countries also hold emergency stockpiles, and members of the International Energy Agency are required to hold oil stocks equal to at least 90 days of their net imports, but stocks buy time; they don't replace a lost route.

What happens when it is disrupted?

The strait has been threatened before. During the Iran–Iraq War of 1980 to 1988, both sides attacked tankers in the Gulf from 1984 onward, in what became known as the Tanker War, and in 1987 and 1988 the U.S. Navy escorted reflagged Kuwaiti tankers through it. Iran has threatened to close the strait several times since.

In 2026 the risk became real. On 10 March 2026 the EIA reported that petroleum shipments through the strait had fallen after the onset of military action in the Middle East, and its forecasts assumed an effective closure. Its October 2026 outlook estimated what that did to production in the Gulf, which gives a measured picture of who a closure hits hardest:

Country	Production, Feb 2026 (thousand barrels a day)	Average shut in, Mar–Jul 2026	Share shut in
Iraq	4,400	2,646	60%
Kuwait	2,560	1,466	57%
Saudi Arabia	10,500	2,750	26%
UAE	3,600	740	21%
All seven Gulf producers in the EIA's table, including Iran, Qatar and Bahrain	25,200	8,512	34%

The pattern matches the geography. Countries with a pipeline out, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, lost about a quarter or less of their output; Iraq and Kuwait, which depend on the strait, lost well over half. The EIA estimated that shut-ins peaked at 10.9 million barrels a day in May 2026 and had fallen to 4.8 million by September, helped by convoys, ship-to-ship transfers and bypass routes. In September, attacks on Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline briefly halted the main bypass, and prices jumped. The EIA's October 2026 outlook, finalized on 1 October, assumed flows would stay constrained through the end of 2026; these are estimates, revised from month to month.

Still argued

How much a closure of Hormuz should shape energy policy is debated. Some analysts and governments argue the lesson is to build more bypass pipelines, bigger stockpiles and more oil and gas production outside the Gulf. Others argue it strengthens the case for cutting oil dependence altogether through renewable energy and electrification, as part of the response to climate change. The two aren't exclusive, and most countries pursue some of each; the argument is over the balance and the cost.

Check yourself

• Without looking back: why does a closure of Hormuz raise fuel prices even in a country that buys almost no Gulf oil?
• Why could the bypass pipelines replace only a small share of the strait's normal flow?
• Why did Iraq and Kuwait lose a far bigger share of their output in 2026 than Saudi Arabia and the UAE?

Sources

• Amid regional conflict, the Strait of Hormuz remains critical oil chokepoint — U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2025
• EIA releases latest Short-Term Energy Outlook amid Middle East conflict — U.S. Energy Information Administration, 10 March 2026
• Short-Term Energy Outlook, October 2026 — U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2026
• How deep is the Strait of Hormuz? — Scientific American, 2014