Case 5 · Events 11, 12
Who depends on goods that pass the Strait, and what did the 2026 closure change?
Using IMF/Oxford PortWatch traffic data on what the paper calls “an unprecedented shock to the global economy”, supply-driven falls in Hormuz traffic push up fertiliser prices through inputs such as natural gas, while demand-driven ones have mixed effects.
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A chokepoint is a node “for which substitutes are limited or cannot be activated quickly”; “fertiliser production in the Middle East” is among the nodes that “have become more central over time”.
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In a two-country model, the response of US real GDP growth to the 2026 oil disruption is “only one-twentieth of what it would have been in 1980” and “only one-sixth of the decline in the rest of the world”.
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Machine-learning ship tracking follows dark-shipped crude under sanctions on Iran and others: “These sanctioned flows offset recorded declines in global oil exports”, and customs records do not show them for what they are.
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The papers’ questions measured again on UN Comtrade records. Each reading below is written from these numbers, not from the papers.
The Gulf’s share of Japan’s crude oil imports: 91.2% in Sep 2025, 59.8% in Jul 2026.
| Sep 2025 | 91.2% | – | −11.5% | yes |
| Oct 2025 | 94.7% | – | −10% | yes |
| Nov 2025 | 91% | – | −2.9% | yes |
| Dec 2025 | 92.1% | – | −10.5% | yes |
| Jan–Feb 2026 | 91.6% | – | −7.2% | yes |
| Mar 2026 | 94.4% | – | −12.6% | yes |
| Apr 2026 | 84.1% | – | −8.6% | yes |
| May 2026 | 82.7% | – | −34.6% | yes |
| Jun 2026 | 62.8% | – | +43.3% | yes |
| Jul 2026 | 59.8% | – | +69.6% | yes |
The Gulf’s share of India’s crude oil imports: 49.2% in Sep 2025, 25.5% in Jul 2026.
| Sep 2025 | 49.2% | – | +13.1% | yes |
| Oct 2025 | 52.9% | – | −22.9% | yes |
| Nov 2025 | 37.9% | – | −11.8% | yes |
| Dec 2025 | 57.7% | – | +9.1% | yes |
| Jan–Feb 2026 | 55.2% | – | +5.9% | yes |
| Mar 2026 | 38.4% | – | −35.5% | yes |
| Apr 2026 | 35.3% | – | −9.4% | yes |
| May 2026 | 30.8% | – | +66.4% | yes |
| Jun 2026 | 31.1% | – | +40.2% | yes |
| Jul 2026 | 25.5% | – | +17% | yes |
The Gulf’s share of Japan’s LNG (2711.11) imports: 11.1% in Sep 2025, 5.6% in Jul 2026. Lowest 3% in May 2026.
| Sep 2025 | 11.1% | – | −16.1% | yes |
| Oct 2025 | 10.1% | – | −3.2% | yes |
| Nov 2025 | 8.6% | – | −18.2% | yes |
| Dec 2025 | 13.8% | – | −8.8% | yes |
| Jan–Feb 2026 | 11% | – | −15.4% | yes |
| Mar 2026 | 8.6% | – | +4.2% | yes |
| Apr 2026 | 3.9% | – | +44.7% | yes |
| May 2026 | 3% | – | −11.2% | yes |
| Jun 2026 | 3.8% | – | +2.9% | yes |
| Jul 2026 | 5.6% | – | +10.5% | yes |
The Gulf’s share of world exports, 2025: Nitrogen fertilisers (urea, ammonium nitrate) 26.3%, Ammonia 22.6% and Unwrought aluminium 18.8%.
| Nitrogen fertilisers (urea, ammonium nitrate) | 1 | Russia | 16.4% |
| Nitrogen fertilisers (urea, ammonium nitrate) | 2 | Oman | 9% |
| Nitrogen fertilisers (urea, ammonium nitrate) | 3 | China | 8.7% |
| Nitrogen fertilisers (urea, ammonium nitrate) | 4 | Egypt | 7.1% |
| Nitrogen fertilisers (urea, ammonium nitrate) | 5 | Qatar | 7% |
| Nitrogen fertilisers (urea, ammonium nitrate) | 6 | Saudi Arabia | 6.5% |
| Nitrogen fertilisers (urea, ammonium nitrate) | 7 | Nigeria | 5.2% |
| Nitrogen fertilisers (urea, ammonium nitrate) | 8 | Algeria | 4.9% |
| Nitrogen fertilisers (urea, ammonium nitrate) | 9 | Malaysia | 3% |
| Nitrogen fertilisers (urea, ammonium nitrate) | 10 | UAE | 2.6% |
| Ammonia | 1 | Trinidad and Tobago | 18% |
| Ammonia | 2 | Saudi Arabia | 12.1% |
| Ammonia | 3 | United States | 9.3% |
| Ammonia | 4 | Canada | 8.5% |
| Ammonia | 5 | Oman | 6.9% |
| Ammonia | 6 | Indonesia | 6.8% |
| Ammonia | 7 | Algeria | 5.9% |
| Ammonia | 8 | Russia | 4.8% |
| Ammonia | 9 | Libya | 3.3% |
| Ammonia | 10 | Egypt | 3.2% |
| Unwrought aluminium | 1 | Russia | 12.4% |
| Unwrought aluminium | 2 | Canada | 10.2% |
| Unwrought aluminium | 3 | UAE | 9.5% |
| Unwrought aluminium | 4 | India | 6% |
| Unwrought aluminium | 5 | Malaysia | 5.4% |
| Unwrought aluminium | 6 | Australia | 5% |
| Unwrought aluminium | 7 | Norway | 4.9% |
| Unwrought aluminium | 8 | Netherlands | 4.6% |
| Unwrought aluminium | 9 | Bahrain | 4.6% |
| Unwrought aluminium | 10 | Iceland | 2.9% |
Close the Strait for Gulf exporters (a switch keeps Saudi Arabia's pipeline to the Red Sea and the UAE's to Fujairah open) and rank importers by the share of their crude, LNG, urea, ammonia or aluminium imports at risk
| Importer | At risk, share of its imports | Its other suppliers would ship |
|---|---|---|
| 100% | none | |
| 97.6% | +3,974% | |
| 94.7% | +1,787% | |
| 94.1% | +1,592% | |
| 73.5% | +278% | |
| 68.9% | +221% | |
| 68.8% | +221% | |
| 59.2% | +145% | |
| 47.8% | +92% | |
| 47.3% | +90% | |
| 44.6% | +81% | |
| 43.1% | +76% |
* Did not file this period: its imports are seen through its partners’ reports.
Who could fill the gap: Pakistan, 100% of its imports
It buys from no other supplier in the table: nothing fills the gap in the first round.
The largest other exporters, by share of world exports
Light oils (naphtha, with gasoline)
24.8% of world light oils (naphtha, with gasoline) exports at risk in the first round, summed over the 18 large exporters with an exposure upstream. The 8 listed below carry 24.1%.
| Exporter | Its exposure upstream | World exports at risk |
|---|---|---|
| Saudi Arabiaon the route | 100% | 8% |
| UAEon the route | 100% | 7.2% |
| Omanon the route | 100% | 2.7% |
| Qataron the route | 100% | 2.4% |
| Kuwaiton the route | 100% | 2.4% |
| Singapore | 73.5% | 0.67% |
| Korea | 68.9% | 0.39% |
| India | 47.8% | 0.34% |
An exporter of the next stage loses its share of world exports × its own exposure upstream (× the use share). Exporters on a closed route lose their own exports × the cut. Exposure upstream is the share of its imported crude oil that came from the closed supplier, not of all the crude oil it uses: where most are made at home (Japan, Korea, Germany for car parts), it overstates the risk.
First-round arithmetic on trade shares, not a forecast: an importer’s exposure is its import share from the shocked suppliers × the cut. No stocks, no new suppliers, no price changes.
The bypass switch exempts Saudi Arabia's and the UAE's flows as if their pipelines to the Red Sea (Yanbu) and Fujairah carried everything; pipeline capacity is not in trade data, so the switch gives a lower bound on the share at risk.
Customs data record origin, not route: the Gulf list counts Oman, whose main crude terminal lies outside the Strait, and the UAE's exports from Fujairah alongside cargoes that cross it, and dark-shipped crude (Fernández-Villaverde et al.) is missed or recorded under other origins. Kharroubi measures traffic itself and its effect on prices, output and financial conditions, and Kilian, Plante and Richter model GDP; a trade network sees none of that, and its 2026 months cover only the economies that have filed.
datasteg: the flow sites
money-flow
Where money is made and where it goes: central bank and bank money, and cross-border positions by country pair.
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The world trade network and ten product chains from ore to product, with the events that moved them.
global-network
Funding and trade together: how economies earn, who funds whom against who trades with whom, and what past shocks did to both.
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