Chokepoints That Move Oil

Roughly a fifth of world oil squeezes through Hormuz, a strait narrow enough to swim across. Malacca carries Northeast Asia energy lifeline, Bab el-Mandeb gates every Suez transit, and the Turkish straits hold Black Sea grain and crude.

Chokepoints work because alternatives are bad: pipelines can take only a fraction of Hormuz volumes, and a Cape detour adds about two weeks. That asymmetry makes straits geopolitical levers, priced by insurance markets in real time.

Watch war risk premiums, not headlines: when underwriters reprice a strait, trade is already rerouting around it..