8 Maritime Chokepoints: Maps and Economic Impact

What this guide covers

A maritime chokepoint is a narrow sea passage that a large share of world trade has to pass through. Because ships have little room to reroute, a conflict, an accident or a new restriction at one of these points can lengthen voyages, raise costs and move prices far from where it happened. The slides map eight of them and end with the chain that links a local disruption to the wider economy.

Read every figure with its date

The headline numbers come from different sources and measure different things, so quote each one with its year:

• Oil flows for Malacca, Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, the Turkish Straits and the Danish Straits are U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) figures for the first half of 2025, in barrels of oil a day.
• Suez Canal: 22 per cent of global seaborne container trade passed through it in 2023, according to UNCTAD.
• Strait of Gibraltar: Europe and Africa are about 14 km apart at the narrowest crossing. This is a distance, not a trade flow.
• Taiwan Strait: CSIS ChinaPower estimates that about $1.3 trillion of China's imports and exports passed through it in 2024.

These are snapshots, not live values. Flows shift with conflict, sanctions and freight rates, so check for newer data before calling any of them current.

The eight chokepoints at a glance

1. Strait of Malacca, between the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra: the shortest main sea route from Gulf energy exporters to East Asia, and the largest oil transit chokepoint by volume in the first half of 2025.
2. Strait of Hormuz, between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula: the only sea outlet for most Persian Gulf oil and gas. Pipelines can bypass only part of the flow.
3. Bab el-Mandeb, between Yemen and Djibouti: the southern entrance to the Red Sea. Oil flows through it fell sharply after attacks on shipping from late 2023 pushed many ships around Africa.
4. Suez Canal, in Egypt: the human-made shortcut between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. Sailing round the Cape of Good Hope instead can add about 15 days to a voyage from the Arabian Sea to Europe.
5. Turkish Straits, the Bosporus and the Dardanelles: the only sea link between the Black Sea and the Mediterranean, central to Russian, Kazakh and wider Caspian energy exports.
6. Danish Straits: the gateway between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, a major outlet for Baltic oil and an increasingly important LNG route.
7. Strait of Gibraltar: the natural gateway between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, where traffic between Suez, Mediterranean ports and the Atlantic converges.
8. Taiwan Strait: beside major Chinese and Taiwanese ports, linking the South China Sea with the East China Sea and the markets of northeast Asia. A disruption would hit energy cargoes, container shipping and high-tech supply chains.

How a disruption travels

The last slide sets out the chain in four steps:

1. A passage becomes unsafe or restricted, through conflict, an accident, drought or regulation.
2. Ships detour and voyages lengthen, using more time, fuel and vessel capacity.
3. Freight and insurance costs rise as risk premiums climb and shipping space becomes scarce.
4. Energy and consumer prices feel the pressure as higher transport costs move through supply chains.

Using it in the CSS exam

• In Current Affairs answers on the Red Sea crisis, tension in the Gulf or the South China Sea, name the chokepoint, give one dated figure and follow the four-step chain to its economic effect.
• In questions on Pakistan's energy security, Hormuz matters directly, because much of Pakistan's oil and LNG comes from Gulf suppliers.
• For map practice, mark the eight locations and label the two bodies of water each one connects.