GlobalIn recent months the maritime supply chain of oil and petroleum, especially via the Middle East, has come under immense strain. The ongoing disruptions to sensitive maritime chokepoints make the economics around it increasingly precarious. The Strait of Hormuz has been heavily restricted since March 2, 2026 and as of August 30, 2026 remains effectively closed. According to the EIA, prior to the conflict roughly a fifth of global oil consumption and LNG trade flowed through this chokepoint. There was a partial opening that lasted from June 17, 2026 to July 14, 2026. More recently on July 20, 2026 Yemen’s Houthi movement declared a naval blockade and maritime embargo on Bab el Mandeb strait. Together, the two disruptions have exposed the limited scope for rerouting and increased the risk of a more persistent energy-price shock. In this piece, we examine their impact on tanker shipping routes and Saudi Arabia’s oil trade, using IMF PortWatch data available in Haver’s TRANSPRT Database.
A closer look at chokepoints: Limitations of rerouting
In the month following the closure of Strait of Hormuz, tanker trade volume through Hormuz collapsed to 22.8 thousand tons from 1.97 million tons over the previous 30 days. This difference in lost volume was not absorbed by the aggregate of the remaining chokepoints – Suez Canal (Egypt), Bab el Mandeb (Yemen) and Cape of Good Hope (South Africa) – as the net volume through the alternate corridor remained nearly steady and has actually begun to fall off in the latest month (Figure 1 Blue line).
There were some significant gains made during the partial reopening from June 17 to July 14, where Hormuz tanker volume regained 29.5 percent of its original value. However, the Houthi blockade (July 20) triggered a second, compounding decline, this time visible on all three lines (Figure 1). Hormuz dropped again, and the alternate corridor (which had shown slight gains at that time) dropped as well. These were not two independent shocks; the second disruption hit the very route ships had been relying on to cope with the first.
The US has maintained a strong naval presence in the region and has led Operation Prosperity Guardian, a multinational coalition set up in December 2023, which aims to protect commercial shipping in the Red Sea. The challenge is the asymmetry of the threat from the Houthis: cheap drone and missile attacks on tankers and naval escorts are hard to fully deter, so even a partial or a threatened blockade has proven effective.