Direct answer
What is the Strait of Malacca oil chokepoint? The long sea passage between the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra that links the Andaman Sea / Indian Ocean approaches to the South China Sea. It is the shortest sea route between many Middle East oil and gas suppliers and East and Southeast Asian markets. On OilRoutes, Malacca is one of eight named map boxes: the rectangle is deliberately wide because the traffic lane is long, not a single Hormuz-style pinch. The in-zone figure is a live count of tracked AIS oil-tanker hulls inside that rectangle — not barrels per day and not an official transit census. Dated volume leadership belongs to EIA World Oil Transit Chokepoints and outlets that quote it — never to an OilRoutes panel string.
Four names get mashed whenever an Asia-lane headline hits the tape. Hormuz is the Gulf 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 that takes Gulf barrels the rest of the way to East Asian refineries. Mix them up and you fly the camera to the wrong rectangle. The eight oil-transit boxes name every rectangle; this page is the Malacca note.
Open the live map and fly to Malacca →
What the Strait of Malacca is
The strait sits between the Malay Peninsula — Malaysia, with Thailand at the northern approaches and Singapore at the southeastern pinch — and Sumatra. West: Andaman Sea, then the Indian Ocean. East: the Singapore Strait and the South China Sea. A Gulf-loaded tanker bound for China, Japan, Korea, or Singapore still has this lane to run. It is a corridor, not a single gate.
The Star’s 3 August 2026 QuickCheck called it about 800 kilometres and used “nearly 100,000 vessels” a year as all-traffic order of magnitude — every ship type, not an oil-only census, and not an OilRoutes count.1 EIA, last updated 3 March 2026, states the energy job: the shortest sea route between Middle East oil and gas suppliers and East and Southeast Asian markets.2
Geography in one screen: not Hormuz / not BeM / not Suez
| Waterway | What it is | What it is not |
|---|---|---|
| Strait of Hormuz | Only sea exit from the Persian Gulf | Not the Asia-lane pinch; not a Malacca problem |
| Bab el-Mandeb | Southern door, Red Sea ↔ Gulf of Aden | Not the Southeast Asian lane; not Suez |
| Suez Canal | Artificial cut, Red Sea → Mediterranean | Not an East Asia shortcut; not Malaccamax water |
| Strait of Malacca | Long Malay–Sumatra lane to the South China Sea | Not a Hormuz-style pinch; not a throughput meter |
The three western doors feed this eastern lane, or they starve it. A hull that never clears Hormuz never appears here. A Yanbu loading that cannot use Bab el-Mandeb may only show up after a Cape rounding — or not at all. Those stories live on the Bab el-Mandeb hub and the Cape reroutes note. This page will not re-scrape them.
Why oil desks care
Desks care because EIA, not a map pin, calls this the world’s largest oil-transit chokepoint by volume. The 3 March 2026 World Oil Transit Chokepoints update put first-half 2025 oil flow through Malacca at an estimated 23.2 million barrels a day — 29 percent of maritime oil flows — and named it the primary chokepoint in Asia and Oceania. Crude and condensate were 16.6 million barrels a day; petroleum products 6.5; crude generally a little more than 70 percent of the oil on the lane.2
Those figures are EIA’s, on Vortexa tracking. NST, Al-Monitor (a 23 April 2026 Reuters explainer), and Katadata Databoks (24 April 2026) quoted the same leadership claim and the same 1H25 print.345 Katadata also wrote “about 23 million” and a share against world oil supply — a different denominator from EIA’s 29 percent of maritime flows. Quote the outlet; do not weld the two shares.
OilRoutes does not measure any of that. A busy Malacca box is geometry plus traffic, not proof of 23.2. Do not copy the panel’s “avg flow” string as if this site printed it. EIA’s 1H25 origin mix is why a Hormuz story still matters here: key Persian Gulf OPEC producers — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, and Iraq — accounted for nearly 60 percent of the crude through Malacca, and China for 48 percent of the import volumes that used the strait.2 Upstream lock, downstream lane. The Hormuz 2026 traffic note is the Gulf-exit file. This page will not invent a 2026 Malacca mb/d to match it.
Direct answer
What is Malaccamax, and can OilRoutes filter for it? A naval-architecture label for the largest ships designed to transit this strait under its working depth and under-keel-clearance limits. Public explainers — Wikipedia Malaccamax and The Star’s August 2026 QuickCheck — commonly cite a draught on the order of 20.5 metres, with Wikipedia and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries also publishing related length/beam/DWT envelopes. Quote those sources; do not invent new dimensions. Hulls that exceed the workable envelope typically divert via deeper Indonesian passages such as Lombok (and related Makassar routes). OilRoutes does not filter by Malaccamax, VLCC, or any deadweight class: the map keeps AIS types 80–89 and optional type 35. Use the tanker-types note for size-class language; use the live box only for “tracked AIS in this wide rectangle now.”
Malaccamax: draft ceiling, not an AIS filter
Malaccamax is a fit word, like Suezmax. It is not an AIS code. Wikipedia’s Malaccamax page treats it as the largest tonnage that can use a strait it describes as about 25 metres deep, and lists a typical tanker envelope of 333 metres length, 60 metres beam, 20.5 metres draught, and 300,000 DWT.6 The Star’s QuickCheck used the same 25-metre shallowest-depth language and the same 20.5-metre draft typical; it did not reprint length, beam, or DWT.1 Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ 2010 review — the paper Wikipedia cites — puts the yard’s “300 type” Malaccamax at about 333.0 metres overall length and 20.50 metres draught.7 Wikipedia and MHI agree on length and the 20.5-metre draught. They are still yard and encyclopaedia figures, not a statutory table and not a measurement from this map. This page will not average them into a fake official limit.
VLCC versus the strait
A VLCC is a deadweight class. Malaccamax is a waterway class. Plenty of VLCCs are built to the 20.5-metre conversation so they can keep the short Middle East–East Asia run. A deeper hull does not get a red X on OilRoutes; The Star says those ships detour through Lombok or Makassar.1 The map does not receive draught, DWT, or a Malaccamax flag. VLCC, Suezmax, and Aframax is the size-class note: attributed industry bands, and the honesty rule that OilRoutes keeps types 80–89.
What the OilRoutes Malacca box shows
The map’s Malacca rectangle is wide on purpose. In js/chokepoints.js it runs roughly 0.5–4.5°N, 99.0–105.0°E, camera center near 2.5°N, 101.5°E — an envelope over a long traffic lane, not a Hormuz- or Bab-el-Mandeb-sized pinch. A hull is “in zone” when its latest AIS position falls inside the box. The integer on the stats strip is tracked tankers (types 80–89) broadcasting there right now.
Wide Malacca box = 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 1H25 table.
Map honesty checklist
- The number is “tracked AIS oil-tanker hulls in this wide rectangle now.” It will change as messages arrive and as stale tracks are pruned.
- Do not copy the panel’s “avg flow” string. That label is not a dated EIA print and not a citeable OilRoutes series.
- The map does not filter Malaccamax, VLCC, Suezmax, Aframax, or any DWT class.
- Assume undercount. Dark or silent hulls will not appear. How to read live AIS is the literacy note.
- Demo Mode is labeled and is not live AIS. Do not use a demo fleet to invent a Malacca flow.
How the camera flies and why the boxes exist is how the map works. How a closed or slower lane becomes days, bunkers, freight, and a crude risk premium — without inventing a dollar print — is the markets and freight note.
Open the live map / fly to Malacca →
Hormuz upstream, Malacca downstream
Most of the crude that uses this lane, in EIA’s 1H25 telling, started in the Gulf.2 Hormuz is upstream of Malacca even when both boxes look quiet for different reasons. Mid-August 2026 Hormuz traffic — single-digit tracked crossings after the Islamabad memorandum expired — is already on the Hormuz tanker-traffic note. This page will not re-scrape it. A starved Gulf exit is a starved Asia lane later. A full Gulf exit is not, by itself, a Malacca mb/d.
The Red Sea / Yanbu / Cape chain can also change which hulls eventually show up in Southeast Asian approaches. East–West to Yanbu, Bab el-Mandeb collapse, Suez/SUMED, then the Cape: that sequence is the Bab el-Mandeb hub pointing at the Cape note. Extra weeks around Africa are extra days before a pin can exist in this wide box — not a Malacca throughput print.
Substitutes: Lombok, Sunda, Makassar
EIA’s alternatives around Malacca are the Sunda Strait and the Lombok Strait, a still-longer run around the Indonesian archipelago, and — as a partial, not a sea substitute — an oil pipeline that moves Middle Eastern crude from Myanmar to southwest China.2 The Star names Lombok and Makassar as the usual detour when a hull outgrows the 20.5-metre conversation.1 NST’s April 2026 EIA write-up makes the same point: Sunda and Lombok exist, and they are longer.3 None of those substitutes is an OilRoutes box. A missing pin is not a pipeline statistic. EIA called the Myanmar–southwest China line a partial alternative, not a replacement for the lane.2
Direct answer
How should I use the OilRoutes map for a Malacca or Asia-lane headline? Open the live map, fly to the Malacca box, and treat the in-zone number as tracked AIS oil tankers inside that wide rectangle right now — not throughput and not an EIA flow table. A busy box is geometry plus traffic, not proof of a printed mb/d. Assume undercount. For Gulf-exit supply that feeds this lane, read the Hormuz 2026 note. For Red Sea / Yanbu / Cape wartime substitutes, read the Bab el-Mandeb hub and the Cape reroutes note. For how extra days become freight and a crude risk premium without inventing a dollar, read the routes–markets–freight note. For MMSI, status, destination, and Demo Mode, use how to read live AIS.
How to use the map next to a Malacca / Asia-lane headline
- Name the waterway. “Asia oil lane” is a trade. The rectangle is Malacca. Hormuz, Bab-el-Mandeb, and Suez are different cameras.
- Read the claim (largest chokepoint, blocked, dark, VLCC diverting via Lombok, Hormuz starved) before you read the integer.
- Fly to the Malacca box. Count what is broadcasting. That snapshot will move.
- Do not promote the integer to EIA’s 23.2 million barrels a day, or to any other mb/d. The dated leadership print stays on EIA and the outlets that quote it.
- Do not sort the pins into Malaccamax and not-Malaccamax. The map cannot.
- If the story is a closed Gulf exit, open the Hormuz note. If it is Yanbu or a Cape rounding, open the Bab el-Mandeb hub and the Cape note. This page will not invent a new day-count.
- If the story is a freight rate or a crude spot, go to the outlet that printed it. The EIA strip, when live, is Brent/WTI — not a Malacca premium.
Demo Mode is a separate trap. Simulated hulls can sit in the wide box while the EIA strip is still dashes, or the reverse. Cite OilRoutes for what the map shows and for this geography. Cite EIA — and NST, Al-Monitor, or Katadata when they quote EIA — for volume leadership. 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, dollars per barrel, freight rates, ship counts, Malaccamax LOA/beam/draught/DWT, transit percents, or EIA prints. It will not treat an in-zone integer as a census, filter by Malaccamax or VLCC, re-scrape the Hormuz or Cape notes, or turn the Myanmar–southwest China pipeline into a spare strait.