Most of the world’s oil and gas travels by sea, and most of that seaborne trade funnels through a small number of narrow passages known as chokepoints. Because so much cargo squeezes through so little space, a blockage, attack or even a traffic jam at one of them can ripple straight into global prices. These are the ones that matter most.
Strait of Hormuz
The most important oil chokepoint on earth. Roughly a fifth of global petroleum liquids pass between Oman and Iran, and it is the only sea route out of the Persian Gulf — the exit for Saudi, Iraqi, Emirati, Kuwaiti and Qatari crude and LNG. At its narrowest it is about 33 km wide, with shipping lanes just a couple of kilometres across. There is no full bypass; only limited pipeline capacity can route around it.
Bab el-Mandeb and the Red Sea
The gateway between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, and the southern approach to the Suez Canal. Attacks on shipping since late 2023 have repeatedly pushed tankers onto the far longer route around the Cape of Good Hope, adding roughly ten days and significant cost to Europe-bound cargoes.
Suez Canal
Egypt’s canal carries around a tenth of world seaborne trade and is the shortcut between Europe and Asia for crude, refined products and LNG. When it is disrupted — as in the 2021 grounding that blocked it for six days — the alternative is the Cape route, which reshuffles global freight for weeks.
Strait of Malacca
The main east–west passage between the Indian and Pacific Oceans and the artery for oil and LNG heading to China, Japan and South Korea. It is just 2.8 km wide at the Singapore end, making it one of the busiest and most congested waterways in the world.
Turkish Straits
The Bosphorus and Dardanelles are the only way out of the Black Sea, carrying Russian and Kazakh crude to the Mediterranean under the century-old Montreux Convention. They are narrow, winding, run through the middle of Istanbul, and are frequently slowed by weather and traffic controls.
Panama Canal
A key route for LPG, LNG and refined products between the US Gulf Coast and Asia. Unlike the others its main constraint is not geopolitics but water: in drought years, falling lake levels force the canal authority to cut the number and draft of ships allowed through.
The common thread is fragility. Each chokepoint concentrates an enormous share of global energy trade into a passage a few kilometres wide, with no quick substitute. That is why markets react so sharply to any hint of trouble at one of them — and why tracking them in real time is worth doing.