Strait of Hormuz map: what each location means for shipping

The northern shore is Iranian along its whole length. Bandar Abbas is Iran's main port on the strait and a base for its navy. Just to the west lies Qeshm, Iran's largest island, and at the bend of the strait sit the smaller islands of Hormuz and Larak, which are the closest land to the main shipping channel.

The southern shore at the narrowest point belongs to Oman. Musandam is an Omani exclave, separated from the rest of the country by UAE territory, and its main town is Khasab. Further west, Abu Musa and the Greater and Lesser Tunb islands have been held by Iran since 1971 and remain claimed by the UAE. Ships bound for Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq all pass this cluster of islands.

Shipping normally follows a traffic separation scheme adopted by the IMO in 1968 at the proposal of Iran and Oman. It has one inbound and one outbound lane, each two nautical miles wide, divided by a two mile separation zone. The entire scheme lies inside Omani territorial waters, because the deepest water runs along the Musandam side.

That pattern has broken down in 2026. Ships are now advised not to use the scheme because of reported mines. Oman has published a waiting area and a temporary eastbound corridor in its waters, while Iran treats a northern route as its own responsibility. Mariners are therefore working with two competing sets of instructions in a strait where Iran's and Oman's territorial seas overlap.

Almost every major Gulf energy terminal sits behind the strait. Saudi Arabia loads crude at Ras Tanura, Iraq at its Basra terminals, Kuwait at Mina al Ahmadi and Iran at Kharg Island. Qatar ships its LNG from Ras Laffan, and several of its LNG production units were damaged at the start of the war. Jebel Ali in Dubai, the region's largest container port, is also inside the strait.

Before the war, about 20 million barrels a day of oil passed through Hormuz, roughly a fifth of world consumption, along with about a fifth of global LNG trade. Saudi Arabia supplied about 38% of the crude flow. About 84% of the crude and 83% of the LNG went to Asia, and China, India, Japan and South Korea together took 69%.

Three pipelines can move oil around the strait. Saudi Arabia's East West pipeline runs from Abqaiq to Yanbu on the Red Sea and is rated at 5 million barrels a day, after a temporary conversion lifted it to 7 million in 2019. The UAE pipeline from Habshan to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman is rated at about 1.8 million barrels a day. Iran's line from Goreh to Jask has an effective capacity of about 300,000 barrels a day and stopped loading after September 2024.

Before the war, only about 2.6 million barrels a day of Saudi and UAE bypass capacity was unused. That is the core of the map's message: the pipelines help, but they cannot replace a flow of about 20 million barrels a day. Fujairah and Yanbu also sit near their own risks, with Fujairah just outside the strait and Yanbu on the Red Sea, which has its own shipping crisis.

Distance is the problem. Ships in the strait pass within a few miles of Iranian islands and coastline, so mines, drones, missiles and boarding teams can reach them quickly. On Nov 3 a tanker was hit by two projectiles about 14 nautical miles northeast of Limah on the Musandam coast, and US forces struck an air defense site on Qeshm. The Revolutionary Guard also claimed that four tankers hit mines in a prohibited lane south of the strait, a claim that has not been independently verified. Iranian officials have suggested that undersea cables in the Gulf could become targets.

Traffic reflects that. Before the war, more than 80 ships crossed the strait each day. In the first half of Nov 4, only a handful of crossings showed on ship tracking data. October totals were higher, at roughly 750 transits once ships sailing without tracking are counted, but that is still a fraction of normal. On Nov 3 Iran called the US reply to its conditions for reopening not convincing, while Qatar continues to mediate.

Start by placing your own exposure on it. List suppliers, refiners and LNG sellers that load inside the Gulf, and mark which could switch to Yanbu or Fujairah. Note which of your cargoes are bound for Asia, since that is where most Gulf energy goes, and which inputs such as fertilizer, plastics and aluminum are made in Gulf industrial zones.

Then set triggers. A formal reopening deal, a change in IMO routing advice, a strike on a bypass terminal or a mine incident in the Omani corridor should each prompt a review of inventory, freight and insurance. The strait reopening would not end the risk overnight, because mines and insurance conditions would take time to clear.