briefly hit $82 (\u00a361) a barrel on Monday<\/a>, after at least three ships were attacked near the Strait of Hormuz at the weekend.<\/p>\nThat has left about 150 tankers stranded, according to the Reuters news agency.<\/p>\n
According to data from the London Stock Exchange Group, the cost of hiring a supertanker to ship oil from the Middle East to China has almost doubled from last week\u2019s price to a record high of more than $400,000 (\u00a3298,300).<\/p>\n
The closure of the vital shipping lane will also hurt Gulf countries, like Saudi Arabia, whose economies rely heavily on energy exports.<\/p>\n
Iran, by comparison, exports about 1.7 million barrels per day, according to the International Energy Agency. Iran exported $67bn (\u00a350bn) worth of oil in the financial year ending March 2025 \u2013\u00a0its highest oil revenue in the past decade \u2013\u00a0according to estimates by the Central Bank of Iran.<\/p>\n
A blockade of the strait will also hit Asia hard.<\/p>\n
In 2022, around 82% of crude oil and condensates (low-density liquid hydrocarbons that typically occur with natural gas) leaving the Strait of Hormuz were bound for Asian countries, according to EIA estimates.<\/p>\n
China alone is estimated to buy around 90% of the oil that Iran exports to the global market.<\/p>\n
Because China uses that oil to make products it then exports to other countries, higher oil prices could also mean higher prices for consumers around the world.<\/p>\n
United Nations rules allow countries to exercise control of territorial seas up to 12 nautical miles (13.8 miles) from their coastline.<\/p>\n
At its narrowest point, the Strait of Hormuz and its shipping lanes lie entirely within Iran and Oman\u2019s territorial waters.<\/p>\n
It is unclear exactly how Iran plans to shut the strait but according to experts one of the most effective ways for them to do it would be to lay mines using fast attack boats and submarines.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s regular navy and the IRGC navy could potentially launch attacks on foreign warships and commercial vessels.<\/p>\n
However, large military ships may in turn become easy targets for US air strikes, and US President Donald Trump has said that one of his aims is to destroy Iran\u2019s navy.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s fast boats are often armed with anti-ship missiles, and the country also operates a range of surface vessels, semi-submersible craft and submarines.<\/p>\n
The US has previously used its military might to re-establish the flow of maritime traffic through the strait.<\/p>\n
In the late 1980s, during the eight-year Iran-Iraq war, strikes on oil facilities escalated into a \u201ctanker war\u201d that saw both countries attacking neutral ships to exert economic pressure.<\/p>\n
Kuwaiti tankers carrying Iraqi oil were especially vulnerable. Eventually, American warships began escorting them through the Gulf in what became one of the largest naval surface warfare operations since World War Two, according to the US Naval Institute.<\/p>\n
The persistent threat of a closure of the Strait of Hormuz has, over the years, prompted oil-exporting countries in the Gulf region to develop alternative export routes.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia operates a 1,200km-long pipeline capable of transporting up to 5 million barrels of crude oil per day, according to the EIA.<\/p>\n
In the past is has also temporarily repurposed a natural gas pipeline to carry crude oil.<\/p>\n
The United Arab Emirates has connected its inland oilfields to the port of Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman via a pipeline with a daily capacity of at least 1.5 million barrels.<\/p>\n
Oil could be diverted along the alternate infrastructure to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, but Reuters reports that would lead to a drop in supply of between 8-10 million barrels per day.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Iran says it will \u201cset fire\u201d to any ships trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the world\u2019s busiest oil shipping channel. Usually, about 20% of global oil and gas passes through the narrow shipping lane in the Gulf. But Iran\u2019s General Sardar Jabbari said that Tehran will now \u201cnot let a single drop […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132894\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}