THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ IS THE MAJOR ENERGY CHOKEPOINT IN THE WORLD

Approximately 30% of the world's oil and petroleum products delievered by sea travel through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Strait of Hormuz is the world's most important chokepoint with an oil flow of 17 million barrels per day in 2013, about 30% of all seaborne-traded oil.

Located between Oman and Iran, the Strait of Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea. The Strait of Hormuz is the world's most important oil chokepoint because of its daily oil flow of 17 million barrels per day in 2013. Flows through the Strait of Hormuz in 2013 were about 30% of all seaborne-traded oil.

EIA estimates that more than 85% of the crude oil that moved through this chokepoint went to Asian markets, based on data from Lloyd's List Intelligence tanker tracking service.6 Japan, India, South Korea, and China are the largest destinations for oil moving through the Strait of Hormuz.

Qatar exported about 3.7 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) per year of liquefied natural gas (LNG) through the Strait of Hormuz in 2013, according to BP's Statistical Review of World Energy 2014.7 This volume accounts for more than 30% of global LNG trade. Kuwait imports LNG volumes that travel northward through the Strait of Hormuz.

At its narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz is 21 miles wide, but the width of the shipping lane in either direction is only two miles wide, separated by a two-mile buffer zone. The Strait of Hormuz is deep and wide enough to handle the world's largest crude oil tankers, with about two-thirds of oil shipments carried by tankers in excess of 150,000 deadweight tons.

[source : World Oil Transit Chokepoints, EIA, https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/regions-topics.cfm?RegionTopicID=WOTC, 10th November 2014]