About half of the world's oil is shipped by sea and most of it passes through one of three narrow shipping lanes, two of them in the Middle East. As a result, even brief blockages could cause price spikes that threaten global economic growth."
Here are some details about the Strait of Hormuz:
* WHERE IS THE STRAIT?
- The most important oil transit channel in the world is a narrow bend of water separating Oman and Iran. It connects the biggest Gulf oil producers, such as Saudi Arabia, with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.
- At its narrowest point, the strait is only 21 miles across and consists of 2-mile (3-km) wide navigable channels for inbound and outbound shipping and a 2-mile-wide buffer zone.
* OIL SHIPMENTS:
- Flows through the Strait in 2009 were roughly 33 percent of all seaborne traded oil (40 percent in 2008), or 17 percent of oil traded worldwide, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
- Some 15.5 million barrels passed through in 2009, according to the U.S. EIA. U.S. warships patrol the area to ensure the safe passage.
- The bulk of the oil exported through the Strait of Hormuz travels to Asia, the United States and Western Europe. About three-quarters of Japan's oil imports and about 50 percent of China's pass through this strait.
- An additional 2 million barrels of oil products, including fuel oil, are exported through the passage daily, as well as liquefied natural gas (LNG).
* ALTERNATIVE ROUTES:
- Industry sources last month said that the United Arab Emirates could soon start pumping oil via a pipeline that would allow it to bypass the Straits of Hormuz and protect exports if Western powers resort to military action in a row over Iran's nuclear program. The Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline (ADCOP) project, a 480-km pipeline with a capacity of up to 2.5 million barrels per day (bpd) will allow the UAE, one of the world's top five exporters, to boost exports from its Fujairah terminal outside the Straits and on the Gulf of Oman.
- Other alternate routes could include the deactivated 1.65-million barrels per day Iraqi Pipeline across Saudi Arabia (IPSA), and the deactivated 0.5 million-barrels per day Tapline to Lebanon.
- Additional oil could also be pumped north via the Iraq-Turkey pipeline to the port of Ceyhan on the Mediterranean Sea, but volumes have been limited by the closure of the pipeline linking north and south Iraq.
* STRATEGIC CORRIDOR:
- Merchant ships carrying grain, iron ore, sugar, perishables and containers full of finished goods also pass through the strategic sea corridor en route to Gulf countries and ports such as Dubai.
Sources: Reuters/International Energy Agency (IEA), U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
(Reporting by David Cutler, London Editorial Reference Unit)
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