As the world braces for a potential “Battle of Hormuz” to reopen the world’s most important energy chokepoint, governments and energy markets are scrambling to answer a daunting question: What happens if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed for weeks or even months?
The narrow waterway between Iran and Oman is the most critical chokepoint in the global energy system. Roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil supply moves through it every day, along with enormous volumes of natural gas and petrochemical feedstocks.
In practical terms, that means that each day about 20 million barrels of oil and another 2 million barrels of oil equivalent in liquefied natural gas normally transit the Strait.
If those flows stop for an extended period, how does the world replace them?
The stark reality is that it can’t—at least not in the short term. The only realistic strategy is to plug as many holes as possible, add whatever incremental supply can be found, and buy time while efforts to reopen the Strait unfold.
Even under optimistic assumptions, the numbers are daunting. Of the roughly 22 million barrels of oil and oil-equivalent energy that normally pass through the Strait each day, coordinated releases from global strategic reserves might temporarily add around 6 to 7 million barrels per day. Alternative pipeline routes from the Persian Gulf could potentially add another 3 to 4 million barrels per day.
Even if every available lever is pulled simultaneously, the world could still face a supply gap of more than 10 million barrels per day.
That gap represents the scale of the challenge now confronting global energy markets.
The Emergency Toolkit
To understand how governments might respond, it helps to look at the physical plumbing of the global energy system. Several tools are available to offset lost supply, but each comes with important limitations.
Strategic Petroleum Reserve Releases
The fastest lever is the release of oil from emergency stockpiles.
In mid-March, the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced a record-breaking coordinated release of 400 million barrels over 60 days. This adds roughly 6.7 million bpd to the global market—albeit it temporarily.
While this is the largest intervention in history, it covers only about one-third of the lost Hormuz volume. Furthermore, the U.S. SPR—currently at only about 58% capacity—faces its own logistical challenges. Even at a maximum drawdown rate of 4.4 million bpd, it takes nearly two weeks for those barrels to navigate the domestic pipe system and reach the Gulf Coast terminals for export. Strategic reserves are designed to buy time, not to serve as a long-term replacement for the world’s most vital petroleum artery.
Saudi Arabia’s East–West Pipeline
The most important non-reserve lever lies within Saudi Arabia itself.
The kingdom operates the East–West Pipeline, often referred to as Petroline, which moves crude oil from the Persian Gulf across the country to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. This allows Saudi exports to bypass the Strait of Hormuz entirely.
The pipeline has nameplate capacity of roughly 7 million barrels per day. However, part of that capacity is already utilized, and port logistics limit how much additional crude can be exported.
In practice, analysts estimate Saudi Arabia could increase exports through this route by roughly 2 to 3 million barrels per day during a crisis.
UAE and Iraqi Alternatives
The United Arab Emirates operates a smaller bypass route. The Habshan–Fujairah pipeline connects Abu Dhabi’s oil fields to the port of Fujairah, located outside the Strait of Hormuz.
This line can transport about 1.5 million barrels per day, although much of that capacity is already in use.
Iraq’s only meaningful alternative route runs north through Turkey to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. Years of political disputes with the Kurdistan Regional Government have limited flows along this pipeline, and infrastructure constraints mean that only modest volumes could realistically move through it in the near term.
Taken together, these alternative routes provide only partial relief compared with the massive volumes that normally transit the Strait.
The Hardest Gap: Natural Gas
Oil presents a major challenge, but natural gas will be even more difficult to replace.
Qatar is one of the world’s largest exporters of liquefied natural gas, accounting for roughly 20% of global LNG trade. Nearly all of those shipments normally pass through the Strait of Hormuz.
Unlike oil, LNG supply chains are highly specialized and inflexible. Production facilities, liquefaction plants, tankers, and receiving terminals must all operate in sync.
If Qatari LNG shipments are disrupted, there is little spare capacity elsewhere in the system that can quickly fill the gap. The likely result would be intense competition for cargoes from other exporters such as the United States and Australia, driving prices sharply higher and potentially forcing industrial consumers in some regions to curtail operations.
A Shortfall the Market Can’t Easily Close
Even after accounting for strategic reserve releases and alternative export routes, the numbers remain stark. Under the most optimistic scenario, emergency measures might replace roughly 10 million barrels per day of the energy that normally moves through the Strait of Hormuz.
That would still leave the global market short more than 10 million barrels per day.
History shows that disruptions to major energy chokepoints can have lasting consequences. The closure of the Suez Canal during the 1956 Suez Crisis and again after the 1967 Arab–Israeli War forced tankers to reroute around Africa, dramatically increasing shipping times and costs. During the Iran–Iraq “Tanker War” of the 1980s, attacks on oil shipping in the Persian Gulf rattled markets even though the Strait itself remained open.
But the scale of the Strait of Hormuz today is far larger. No country has ever before been in a position to shut down this much of the world’s energy supply.
A prolonged disruption would also ripple through global agriculture. Fertilizer feedstocks and petrochemical inputs that normally move through the Strait would become harder to obtain, raising the risk that an energy shock could eventually translate into higher food prices.
A supply shock of this scale typically ends in only two ways in the short term: either prices rise high enough to crush demand, or the disrupted routes are restored. Until one of those happens, the world is simply racing the clock.
Two additional variables could slightly soften the blow, but both remain major unknowns. One is whether Iran will continue exporting some oil to select customers despite a broader disruption. The other is the extent to which China might draw on its own strategic petroleum reserves to cushion the impact of rising prices.
Even taking both possibilities into account, however, they would do little to close the remaining supply gap.
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