Conflict escalates in the Gulf after the US and Israeli attacks on Iran and subsequent Iranian retaliation — and observers are warning of a rise in oil prices worldwide with the effective shutdown Strait of Hormuza key shipping route.

The American-Israeli war with Iran has already stopped part of energy exports from the Middle East, and Tehran has attacked ships and energy facilities, closed navigation in the Gulf and forced the suspension of production from Qatar to Iraq. due to damage from Iranian missile attacks on neighboring countries.

The Strait of Hormuz was impassable for a fourth day after Iran attacked five ships, blocking the key artery by threatening to attack anyone who tried to cross.

The narrow stretch of sea in the Persian Gulf is crucial to global trade, and here are four figures that can help you understand why it’s so important.

The strait is located between Oman and Iran and connects the Persian Gulf to the north with the Gulf of Oman to the south and the Arabian Sea beyond.

At its narrowest point, the strait is only 29 nautical miles, or 54 km, wide, according to the International Energy Agency. The waterway, however, is only two miles or about 3.7 km wide.

This makes the Strait of Hormuz a ‘choke point’ — or a narrow shipping lane along a global trade route.

For the oil-rich countries along the Persian Gulf, this narrow sea passage is the only channel connecting the Gulf to the Arabian Sea.

All along the strait are major shipping hubs, including Iran’s main port city of Bandar Abbas.

On average, a total of 20 million barrels of oil are shipped through the Strait of Hormuz each day, according to the International Energy Agency. This amounts to almost a quarter of the total seaborne oil trade, the agency says.

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Saudi Arabia, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq export most of their oil through this narrow stretch of sea, with very few alternative routes available.

Most of the region’s oil is exported to Asian markets, primarily to China, India and Japan. China and India account for 44 percent of the total oil exported from this channel.

“As around 25% of the world’s seaborne oil trade passes through the strait and bypass options are limited, any disruption to flows through the strait would have huge consequences for global oil markets,” the IEA said in a recent report.

It’s not just oil at stake: global natural gas supplies would also be affected if the strait remains closed for an extended period of time. According to the IEA, 20 percent of the world’s total supply of liquefied natural gas (LNG) comes via this route.

About 93 percent of Qatar’s and 96 percent of LNG exports from the United Arab Emirates pass through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the agency.

“There are no alternative routes to bring these quantities to market,” a recent report said.

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Oil trade through the Strait of Hormuz has long been the subject of conflict in the region.

In 1973, Arab producers, led by Saudi Arabia, imposed an oil embargo on Western supporters of Israel at war with Egypt. At that time, Western countries were the main buyers of Middle Eastern oil.

During the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, the two sides sought to disrupt each other’s exports in the so-called Tanker War, which involved attacks on more than 100 oil tankers.

In January 2012, Iran threatened to block the strait in retaliation for US and European sanctions. In May 2019, four ships – including two Saudi oil tankers – were attacked off the coast of the UAE, outside the Strait of Hormuz.

Three vessels, two in 2023 and one in 2024, were seized by Iran near or in the strait. Some of the seizures followed US seizures of tankers linked to Iran.

Last year, Iran considered closing the strait after US attacks on its nuclear facilities.

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US President Donald Trump said the US and Israeli military campaign in Iran was expected to last another “four to five weeks, but we have the ability to go much longer than that”.

Since Saturday’s first attack on Iran, Trump said he warned Iran “not to try to rebuild” its nuclear program.

“I’ve said it from the beginning: They will never have nuclear weapons,” Trump said Monday afternoon at the Medal of Honor ceremony in his first live public address since the attacks.

The shutdown of trade in the Strait of Hormuz is already affecting global oil and gas supplies.

Iraq has cut oil production by nearly 1.5 million barrels a day, and those cuts could increase to more than three million barrels a day within days as the country runs out of storage and cannot export crude because of the Iran crisis, two Iraqi oil officials told Reuters on Tuesday.

Experts warn that a prolonged conflict would have a major impact on global supply.

“We have already seen the outflow from the Strait of Hormuz,” Go Katayama, chief insight analyst at Kpler, told Reuters.

“We are entering an unprecedented era, in my opinion much greater than what we saw in the Ukrainian-Russian crisis,” he added.

The IEA report warns that while much of the region’s supply is sent to Asian markets, the ripple effects will be felt in markets around the world.

“A loss of nearly 20% of global LNG supply would fuel price volatility and require further demand adjustments in key Asian and European import markets,” the agency said in its February report.

The effects of a supply shock would be felt far beyond markets that directly rely on Qatari and Emirati LNG,” it added.

— With files from Reuters

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