Direct answer
What is the Strait of Hormuz oil chokepoint? The narrow sea passage between Iran and Oman’s Musandam Peninsula that connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. It is the only sea exit for Gulf oil and gas that leaves by tanker. On OilRoutes, the Hormuz box is a live count of tracked AIS oil-tanker hulls inside a drawn rectangle — not barrels per day. Peacetime flow language belongs to EIA Today in Energy (id=65504): 20 million barrels a day in 2024, about one-fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption. Never treat a panel string such as dailyAvgFlow or “21M bbl/day” as an OilRoutes measurement.
Five names get mashed whenever a Gulf headline hits the tape. Hormuz is the lock. Bab el-Mandeb is the Red Sea’s southern door. Suez is the canal to the Mediterranean. Malacca is the long Southeast Asian lane. The Cape is the Africa rounding when those doors fail. Mix them up and you fly the camera to the wrong rectangle. The eight oil-transit boxes name every rectangle; this page is the Hormuz geography note. Dated 2026 crossings stay on the Hormuz tanker-traffic note.
Open the live map and fly to Hormuz →
What Hormuz is
The strait sits between Iran on the north shore and Oman’s Musandam Peninsula on the south. West: the Persian Gulf — the loading coast. East: the Gulf of Oman, then the Arabian Sea. A tanker that loads in the Gulf and wants the open ocean has to pass here. There is no other wet door. EIA’s June 2025 Today in Energy note (id=65504) says the same: between Oman and Iran, connecting the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, deep and wide enough for the world’s largest crude tankers.1 BBC’s energy explainer called it about 33 kilometres — 20 miles — at the narrowest, and used “about 20 percent” / “a fifth” for oil and gas on the lane.2 Width and share language, not an OilRoutes survey, and not a substitute for EIA’s 20 million-barrel, 2024 print.
Geography in one screen: not BeM / not Suez / not Malacca / not the Cape
| Waterway | What it is | What it is not |
|---|---|---|
| Strait of Hormuz | Only sea exit from the Persian Gulf | Not the Red Sea; not a Yanbu problem; not a throughput meter |
| Bab el-Mandeb | Southern door, Red Sea ↔ Gulf of Aden | Not the Gulf lock; not Suez |
| Suez Canal + SUMED | Artificial cut and the parallel land pipe across Egypt | Not a Hormuz pinch; not Fujairah |
| Strait of Malacca | Long Malay–Sumatra lane to the South China Sea | Not the Gulf exit; not a Hormuz-style pinch |
| Cape of Good Hope | Southern-Africa rounding when the short doors fail | Not a strait; not a spare Gulf lock |
The western doors feed the eastern lane, or they starve it. A hull that never clears this lock never appears in the Malacca box. A loading that skips Hormuz by pipe and loads at Yanbu still has to clear Bab el-Mandeb or take Suez/SUMED — and often the Cape. Those are different cameras.
Direct answer
Why do desks care, and what bypasses exist? Because most Gulf barrels and a large share of seaborne LNG have no other wet door. EIA 65504 put 2024 oil flow at 20 million barrels a day — about 20 percent of global petroleum liquids consumption, more than one-quarter of seaborne oil trade, and about one-fifth of global LNG trade, mostly from Qatar. Reuters and BBC use the same one-fifth share language. OilRoutes does not measure any of that. Partial bypasses: Saudi East–West to Yanbu (EIA: 5 million b/d; temporarily 7.0 million in 2019); UAE to Fujairah (EIA: 1.8 million b/d); Iran Goreh–Jask (EIA: effective capacity around 300,000 b/d). EIA put about 2.6 million b/d of Saudi and UAE pipeline capacity as available to bypass. Yanbu barrels still need Bab el-Mandeb or Suez/SUMED — often the Cape. Not a spare strait.
Why oil and LNG desks care
Desks care because EIA, not a map pin, owns the peacetime weight. Id=65504, Vortexa-based, put oil through the strait at 20 million barrels a day in 2024 — about 20 percent of global petroleum liquids consumption. First-quarter 2025, in that file, stayed relatively flat. The same note used two other denominators: more than one-quarter of seaborne oil trade, and about one-fifth of global LNG trade, primarily from Qatar.1 Quote the clause. Do not weld them into “20 percent of everything.” Reuters, via Gulf Business, used “a fifth” for pre-war crude and LNG; that share line is already on the 2026 traffic note.3 BBC used the same one-fifth language for oil and gas.2
EIA’s 2024 origin mix is why a quiet pin here is an Asia story later. Saudi Arabia: 5.5 million barrels a day of crude and condensate, 38 percent of Hormuz crude. Asia: 84 percent of the crude and condensate and 83 percent of the LNG; China, India, Japan, and South Korea together 69 percent of those crude and condensate flows.1 The Malacca hub is that lane. This page will not invent a 2026 Hormuz mb/d to match it. A busy box is geometry plus traffic, not proof of 20. The UI label dailyAvgFlow in js/chokepoints.js still reads “21M bbl/day.” That is not EIA’s print and not a citeable OilRoutes series.
Pipeline bypasses are partial — not a spare strait
EIA is explicit: most volumes that transit the strait have no alternative means of exiting the region. Some pipes exist. They do not replace the lock.1
- Saudi East–West → Yanbu. Abqaiq to the Red Sea. EIA: 5 million barrels a day, temporarily 7.0 million in 2019 when some NGL lines were converted to crude.1 Those barrels skip Hormuz. They still need Bab el-Mandeb south or Suez/SUMED north — and often the Cape.
- UAE → Fujairah. EIA: 1.8 million barrels a day to the Gulf of Oman, east of the lock. Day-to-day use, in that file, has limited excess capacity for extra reroutes.1
- Iran Goreh–Jask. EIA: inaugurated with one cargo in July 2021; effective capacity around 300,000 barrels a day. Summer 2024 loadings from Bandar-e-Jask and Kooh Mobarak were under 70,000 barrels a day; loadings stopped after September 2024.1
EIA’s spare-capacity sentence for the Saudi and UAE lines — the only spare figure this page will print — is about 2.6 million barrels a day that “could be available to bypass the Strait of Hormuz in the event of a supply disruption.”1 That is EIA’s estimate, on that vintage. It is not 20 million. It is not a third lock. This page will not invent a higher unused total, a wartime utilization rate, or a terminal-constraint figure from another desk.
A pipeline is a partial bypass. It is not a spare strait. Yanbu still needs a Red Sea door. Fujairah still needs a ship. Jask, on EIA’s 2024 telling, was a thin and then idle option. Do not promote any of those capacities into an OilRoutes throughput series.
What the OilRoutes Hormuz box shows
The map’s Hormuz rectangle sits on the narrows. In js/chokepoints.js it runs roughly 25.0–27.2°N, 55.5–57.5°E, camera center near 26.5°N, 56.5°E — an envelope over the lock, not the whole Gulf. A hull is “in zone” when its latest AIS position falls inside that box. The integer on the stats strip is tracked tankers (types 80–89) broadcasting there right now.
Hormuz box = visible AIS in-zone ≠ throughput. Same honesty as the maritime-oil-chokepoints note. A pin in the rectangle is a radio object in a drawn box. It is not a barrel, not a transit, and not EIA’s 20 million barrels a day. The dark-AIS undercount hub is why a quiet box is not an empty strait.
Map honesty checklist
- The number is “tracked AIS oil-tanker hulls in this rectangle now.” It will move as messages arrive and as stale tracks drop.
- Do not copy the panel’s “avg flow” /
dailyAvgFlowstring — including “21M bbl/day.” That label is not EIA 65504 and not a citeable OilRoutes series. - The map does not filter VLCC, Suezmax, Aframax, or any DWT class. Size-class language is the tanker-types note.
- Assume undercount. Dark or silent hulls will not appear. Dark AIS is the trust-calibration hub; how to read live AIS is the field-literacy note.
- Demo Mode is labeled and is not live AIS. Do not use a demo fleet to invent a Hormuz flow.
How the camera flies is how the map works. How extra days become freight and a crude risk premium — without inventing a dollar — is the markets and freight note.
Open the live map / fly to Hormuz →
2026 traffic: link, do not duplicate
Mid-August 2026 Hormuz traffic — the Islamabad memorandum, single-digit tracked crossings, tanker attacks, the Gulf backlog, and dark-share language — is already written. Those tables live on the Strait of Hormuz tanker traffic 2026 note, from The National/Kpler, Reuters, Anadolu, Al Jazeera, and Windward. This page will not re-scrape them. It will not reprint crossings, attack lists, backlog hulls, or dark-share percents as if OilRoutes measured them. Quote the 2026 note; follow the outlets it cites.
The undercount limit on that file — a transponder-off crossing is still a crossing; the live strip is not a daily transit ledger — is the job of the dark-AIS hub. Substitute geography after a constrained Gulf exit is the sister pages below, not a new scrape.
Sister pages
| If the headline is… | Open this note |
|---|---|
| Hormuz geography, bypasses, AIS box ≠ EIA flow | This page |
| 2026 MoU, crossings, attacks, backlog, dark share | Hormuz tanker traffic 2026 |
| Dark fleet / undercount / “counts don’t match” | Dark-AIS undercount hub |
| Yanbu / southern Red Sea door | Bab el-Mandeb hub |
| Oil via Egypt, VLCC lightening, SUMED | Suez Canal and SUMED hub |
| Africa rounding after a closed Gulf or Red Sea exit | Cape reroutes 2026 |
| Asia-lane / Malaccamax | Strait of Malacca hub |
| Freight or a crude risk premium without a dollar print | Routes, markets, freight |
Direct answer
How should I use the OilRoutes map next to a Hormuz headline? Open the live map, fly to Hormuz, and read the claim before the integer. Treat the number as visible AIS oil tankers in the rectangle right now — not throughput, not EIA’s 20 million barrels a day, and not a Kpler or CENTCOM figure. This page is geography and bypasses. Dated traffic is the Hormuz 2026 note. Undercount is the dark-AIS hub. Next door: Bab el-Mandeb, Suez/SUMED, Cape, Malacca. Never copy the panel’s average-flow string as an OilRoutes measurement.
How to use the map next to a Hormuz headline
- Name the waterway. Fly the Hormuz box. The other doors are other cameras.
- Read the claim — closed, bypass, dark, Yanbu, Fujairah — before the integer.
- Treat the number as visible AIS in the rectangle now. Do not promote it to EIA’s 20 million, the panel’s “21M,” or a Kpler or CENTCOM figure.
- Assume undercount. Open the dark-AIS hub. Do not paste the 2026 note’s dark-share language onto BeM, Suez, or Malacca.
- Dated 2026 traffic: the Hormuz note. Yanbu or a Cape rounding: BeM hub and the Cape note. Egypt: Suez/SUMED. Freight or a crude spot: the outlet that printed it. The EIA strip, when live, is Brent/WTI — not a Hormuz premium.
Demo Mode is a separate trap. Cite OilRoutes for what the map shows and for this geography. Cite EIA 65504 for peacetime flow and pipeline capacities. Cite Reuters and BBC for the one-fifth share language. Cite the 2026 note for wartime traffic. Never cite this article as a throughput series or a price.
What this page will not do
It will not replace the live map. Homepage / stays the product. It will not invent mb/d, ships per day, dark-share percents, backlog hulls, pipeline spare capacity beyond EIA 65504, voyage days, insurance percents, positions, or dollars per barrel. It will not present dailyAvgFlow / “21M bbl/day” as an OilRoutes measurement. It will not re-scrape the 2026 MoU, crossings, attacks, backlog, or dark-share tables. It will not turn East–West, Fujairah, or Goreh–Jask into a spare strait.