What is the Strait of Hormuz and why does it matter for oil?
A strip of water you could cross in a day carries about a fifth of the world's oil, and there is almost no other way out.
▶ Start the storyThe Strait of Hormuz is a narrow waterway between Oman and Iran that links the Persian Gulf to the open ocean. It matters for oil because a huge amount passes through it and there is almost no other way out. According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), oil flow through the strait averaged 20 million barrels a day in 2024, about a fifth of everything the world uses.
20 million
Think of the Persian Gulf as a room with one main door. The strait is the only sea passage from the Gulf to the open ocean, so oil that leaves by tanker has to go through it. Ships keep to two lanes, one going in and one coming out, each 2 nautical miles wide with a gap of the same width between them, a bit like a motorway with a central reservation. The EIA also found that flows made up more than a quarter of all oil moved by sea, and around a fifth of the world's , much of it from Qatar.
Some oil can go another way. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have pipelines that bypass the strait, but the EIA estimated that only about 2.6 million barrels a day of that capacity could be used in a disruption, a small slice of the roughly 20 million that normally pass through by ship. Most of the cargo, 84 percent of crude oil and in 2024, goes to Asia, with China, India, Japan and South Korea taking the biggest share.
That is why a threat in the area is watched so closely. In June 2025 the EIA noted that the Brent price, a global , rose from $69 to $74 a barrel in a single day amid regional tensions, even though it had seen no blockage of ships.
In 2026 the strait itself became the story. According to Wikipedia's article on the 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis, shipping through it has been largely blocked by Iran since 28 February 2026, when the United States and Israel launched an air war against Iran. As of October 2026, the same article records at least 12 attacks on ships in the strait in the week from 28 September to 5 October, the most since the war began.
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Recap
The Strait of Hormuz is the one main exit for Gulf oil, so even a threat to it can move prices.
💡 A trick to remember it · Picture a motorway lane two ships wide with a fifth of the world's oil squeezing through: one narrow door out of the Gulf.
Surprising fact · About 20 million barrels of oil a day flowed through it in 2024, roughly a fifth of global consumption.
Sources (4)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (18 claims) cites at least one of these.
- [1]Amid regional conflict, the Strait of Hormuz remains critical oil chokepoint (Today in Energy, 16 June 2025) · U.S. Energy Information Administration
- [2]The Strait of Hormuz is the world's most important oil transit chokepoint (Today in Energy, 21 November 2023) · U.S. Energy Information Administration
- [3]Strait of Hormuz · Wikipedia
- [4]2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis · Wikipedia