The Strait of Hormuz: The World's Most Important Gap

On a map it looks like nothing — a pinch of blue between Oman and Iran, narrow enough that you could cross it in an afternoon. It is, by some distance, the most important gap of water on earth, and this week the whole world was reminded why.

A fifth of the oil, one front door

Roughly a fifth of the oil the world burns, plus a large slice of its liquefied natural gas, passes through the Strait of Hormuz. There are a few pipelines that can carry oil around it, but nowhere near enough to replace the strait if traffic stops. Most of that oil has one front door, and this week the door has been reported as largely jammed.

That is why a disruption here is not a regional inconvenience but a global one. The price you pay for petrol in a city that has never heard of Hormuz is set, in part, by what happens in this narrow channel.

The strange safety of mattering too much

There is a thin reassurance buried in the danger. Because so many countries depend on the strait staying open, almost everyone — producers, buyers, rivals — has an interest in not closing it for long. That shared dependence has kept it open through past crises. Whether that logic holds this time is exactly what the nervous traders are trying to work out.