Strait of Hormuz oil flow: how much passes and who depends on it

The Strait of Hormuz oil flow averaged about 20 million barrels per day of crude and refined products in 2025, roughly a quarter of the world's seaborne oil trade and a third of all crude traded by sea, according to the IEA. It also carried just over 112 bcm of LNG, close to 20% of global LNG trade, almost all of it from Qatar. No other maritime chokepoint concentrates a comparable share of global energy supply, and the pipelines that bypass it can move at most 5.5 mb/d of crude and no LNG at all.

The strait is a 21-nautical-mile passage between Iran and Oman connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman. Since 28 February 2026, when US and Israeli strikes on Iran opened a war, it has been effectively closed to routine commercial shipping: Iran mined the approaches, attacked or boarded vessels that ignored its routing directives, and war-risk insurers repriced Gulf transits so steeply that most owners stopped sailing. A ceasefire in April and a memorandum of understanding in June reopened it briefly; attacks on three vessels on 7 July 2026 closed it again. As of mid-September 2026 daily transits are running at a fraction of the pre-war baseline.

Key numbers

What flows through the Strait of Hormuz: oil, products and LNG

Crude is the bulk of the traffic. In 2025 Saudi Arabia shipped 5.43 mb/d of crude and condensate through the strait, Iraq 3.32 mb/d, the UAE 2.02 mb/d, Iran 1.69 mb/d, Kuwait 1.40 mb/d and Qatar 0.73 mb/d, according to IEA analysis of Kpler tracking. The Saudi-Kuwaiti Neutral Zone added 0.35 mb/d. Refined products, mostly diesel, jet fuel and fuel oil from Gulf refineries, added another 4.93 mb/d, led by the UAE (1.22 mb/d), Kuwait (0.97 mb/d) and Saudi Arabia (0.80 mb/d).

The gas side is concentrated in one exporter. Qatar shipped over 112 bcm of LNG in 2025 and the UAE about 7 bcm; excluding deliveries to Kuwait inside the Gulf, all of it transits Hormuz. Qatar also pipes almost 20.5 bcm a year to the UAE and Oman through the Dolphin line, which stays inside the Gulf. The IEA puts LNG through the strait at just over 112 bcm, 19 to 20% of world LNG trade.

Flows do not just run outbound. Gulf states import steel, grain, machinery and consumer goods through the same passage, and Dubai's Jebel Ali is the Middle East's main transshipment port. The energy numbers dominate because they are the ones with no substitute.

Who depends on the Strait of Hormuz

Asia absorbs about 80% of the crude leaving the strait. China and India alone took 44% of Hormuz crude exports in 2025; IEA member countries took 29%, with Japan and Korea the most exposed among them. Europe received only about 600 kb/d, 4% of the crude flow, which is why the oil shock of 2026 hit Asian refiners first and Europe mainly through price.

For LNG the concentration is sharper. Almost 90% of Qatari and Emirati LNG went to Asia in 2025, supplying about 27% of Asia's total LNG imports but only 7% of Europe's. According to GIIGNL, Qatar and the UAE provided 59% of India's LNG supply in 2025, 34% of Taiwan's, 31% of China's and 15% of South Korea's. The IEA notes that Bangladesh, India and Pakistan sourced almost two thirds of their LNG through Hormuz, and that gas covers 50% of Bangladesh's and 25% of Pakistan's electricity. See natural gas producers and importers for the wider trade map and India's crude import dependence for the largest single exposed buyer after China.

Sources: EIA (crude, Q1 2025); GIIGNL (LNG, 2025); IEA (Europe).

Alternatives and bypass routes

The strait matters because the alternatives are small, and the 2026 crisis tested every one of them.

Saudi East-West Pipeline (Petroline). Two lines from Abqaiq to Yanbu on the Red Sea, 5 mb/d design capacity, raised to a reported 7 mb/d in March 2025. The IEA estimated about 2 mb/d in use in early 2026, leaving 3 to 5 mb/d of spare capacity depending on loading capacity at Yanbu. Bloomberg reported on 28 March 2026 that Aramco was pumping the full 7 mb/d, with tanker fleets redirected to Yanbu. This is the only bypass large enough to move the needle, and it exports Saudi crude only.

UAE Habshan-Fujairah (ADCOP). 400 km to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, 1.5 mb/d nameplate, close to 1.8 mb/d reported capacity, about 1.1 mb/d used normally, so roughly 0.7 mb/d spare. ADNOC is fast-tracking a parallel West-East line that Kpler and Reuters report would lift UAE bypass capacity to about 3.6 mb/d by mid-2027, with the project reported 50% complete in July 2026.

Iran Goreh-Jask. 1 mb/d reported capacity to the Gulf of Oman, inaugurated in 2021, but effectively non-operational: one test cargo in late 2024 and nothing since, per the IEA.

Iraq. No operational bypass. Kirkuk-Ceyhan to Türkiye has been intermittent for years; Mediterranean corridor options through Türkiye and Syria are on a 3 to 5 year horizon according to Kpler.

LNG. No bypass exists. Qatar's liquefaction plants sit at Ras Laffan inside the Gulf, Oman's LNG terminals already ran near 100% utilisation and the Dolphin pipeline has limited spare capacity. A closure removes over 300 million cubic metres per day from the global LNG market, roughly double the gas Nord Stream carried in 2021.

Adding everything up, the IEA's 3.5 to 5.5 mb/d of bypass capacity covers at most a quarter of the 20 mb/d that normally transits. The rest, and all the LNG, is structurally locked to the passage. Rerouting also lengthens voyages: Yanbu and Fujairah loadings add days to Asian deliveries and, with the Red Sea under renewed Houthi attack in 2026, Yanbu cargoes bound for Europe face a second exposed corridor. See Bab el-Mandeb.

Historical incidents

Assets and companies exposed

Exposure runs along the whole chain, and the 2026 closure showed which links break first.

Gulf producers and exporters. Saudi Aramco, ADNOC, Kuwait Petroleum, Iraq's SOMO, QatarEnergy and Bahrain's Bapco depend on the strait for the majority of their exports; only Aramco and ADNOC hold bypass capacity. EIA estimated 10.5 mb/d of their combined crude output shut in during April 2026.

Tanker owners. VLCC and LNG carrier operators with Gulf-heavy trades (Bahri, Nakilat, Frontline, DHT, Euronav, MOL and NYK on the LNG side) faced cancelled cover, then premiums of 7.5 to 10% of hull value per transit, per Lloyd's List, against 0.2 to 0.25% before the war. Freight rates on the routes that stayed open rose accordingly.

Insurers. Lloyd's of London syndicates and the P&I clubs write most marine war risk; the Joint War Committee redesignated the whole Arabian Gulf a listed area in March 2026. Underwriting, not naval action, was what closed the strait commercially in the first days.

Asian refiners and gas buyers. Sinopec, PetroChina, Reliance, Indian Oil, ENEOS, SK Innovation and S-Oil buy the largest volumes of Hormuz crude. Petronet LNG, KOGAS, CPC (Taiwan), Petrobangla and Pakistan's PSO hold long-term Qatari LNG contracts that QatarEnergy warned may fall under force majeure.

Downstream in the Gulf. Fertiliser (QAFCO, SABIC), aluminium and petrochemical exporters ship through the same lanes; DP World's Jebel Ali handles about 15.5 million TEU a year and the Gulf about 3.5% of global container trade.

Beneficiaries by displacement. US Gulf Coast refiners and LNG exporters captured record product and LNG export volumes in Q2 2026, per EIA. This is descriptive: the encyclopedia does not publish recommendations.

What to watch

• Daily transits: IMF PortWatch (public, daily) and JMIC/UKMTO advisories. Pre-war baseline was 85 to 138 vessels a day depending on the count method; any sustained reading above 60 on the seven-day average is the reopening signal markets trade.
• War-risk pricing: Lloyd's List and the Lloyd's Market Association publish indicative quotes; the Joint War Committee listed-areas circular sets the baseline. Cover falling back toward 1% of hull value would precede a real recovery in tanker calls.
• Physical flows: EIA's quarterly Global Energy Security Data (Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, Malacca volumes) and the IEA Oil Market Report track how much oil is actually leaving and via which route (Yanbu, Fujairah).
• Ras Laffan repair timeline: QatarEnergy statements on Trains 4 and 6 and on the North Field East start-up, which GIIGNL expects to slip past late 2026.
• Diplomacy: the Iran-Oman corridor framework, any successor to the June MoU and the status of the US blockade.
• Prices: Brent, the TTF-JKM spread and VLCC rates on Gulf-to-Asia routes are the market's running vote on reopening.

FAQ

How much oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz? About 20 million barrels per day in 2025 according to the IEA and EIA: roughly 15 mb/d of crude and condensate plus 5 mb/d of refined products. That is about 25% of global seaborne oil trade and around 20% of world petroleum consumption. Flows fell to 14.6 mb/d in the first quarter of 2026 and much lower after March once the closure took hold.

Is the Strait of Hormuz closed right now? As of mid-September 2026 it is effectively closed to routine commercial shipping. Iran restricted passage after the 28 February 2026 US-Israeli strikes; a June memorandum reopened it toll-free for 60 days, but Iranian attacks on 7 July collapsed the deal and the US reimposed its blockade. IMF PortWatch recorded 8 transits on 13 September against a pre-war baseline of about 85 a day. Iran and Oman proposed a phased reopening corridor in late August; it had not been implemented at the time of writing.

Can tankers avoid the Strait of Hormuz? Only partly. Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline can move up to 7 mb/d to Yanbu on the Red Sea and the UAE's Habshan-Fujairah line about 1.8 mb/d to the Gulf of Oman; the IEA puts usable spare capacity at 3.5 to 5.5 mb/d, a quarter of normal flow. Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Iran have no working alternative, and Qatari LNG has no bypass at all.

How much LNG goes through the Strait of Hormuz? Just over 112 bcm in 2025, about 20% of global LNG trade, almost all of it from Qatar's Ras Laffan complex with a small share from the UAE. Around 90% of it goes to Asia. A closure removes over 300 million cubic metres a day from the market, and other liquefaction plants were already running close to capacity, so the volumes cannot be replaced quickly.

Which countries depend most on the Strait of Hormuz? For crude: China (about 5.4 mb/d in early 2025), India, South Korea and Japan, which together with the rest of Asia take about 80% of the flow. For LNG: India (59% of its supply from Qatar and the UAE), Taiwan (34%), China (31%), Bangladesh and Pakistan (about two thirds of their LNG). The United States imports only around 0.4 to 0.5 mb/d through it and Europe about 0.6 mb/d of crude and 7% of its LNG.

Has the Strait of Hormuz ever been closed before 2026? No. Iran threatened closure repeatedly (2011 to 2012, 2018 to 2019, 2025) and the Tanker War of 1984 to 1988 saw over 400 ships attacked, but commercial traffic never stopped. The 2026 crisis is the first time transits collapsed to single digits per day, and it did so through mines, ship attacks and insurance withdrawal rather than a formal naval blockade by Iran.