Every Active Chokepoint in Global Shipping, Ranked by Daily Transit Volume
A chokepoint is a stretch of water narrow enough that closing it forces a detour long enough to change the economics of a trade. That definition excludes a lot of famous straits and includes a few obscure ones. Ranked below by throughput, with the reroute cost that gives each one its leverage.
Volumes are approximate and stated on a normal-year basis. Several of these have not had a normal year since 2023, which is noted where it applies.
1. Strait of Malacca
Roughly 23 to 24 million barrels per day of crude and refined products, plus a substantial share of global container traffic. Something on the order of ninety thousand vessel transits a year.
The narrowest navigable stretch is around two and a half kilometres wide near Singapore. Malacca carries the bulk of Middle Eastern and African energy heading to China, Japan and South Korea, which is the entire basis of the argument about Chinese energy vulnerability.
Alternatives exist and this is what distinguishes Malacca from Hormuz. The Sunda and Lombok straits can absorb traffic at the cost of roughly three to five days and greater draught constraints for the largest vessels. Malacca is a cost chokepoint rather than an absolute one.
2. Strait of Hormuz
Roughly 20 to 21 million barrels per day of petroleum liquids, close to a fifth of global consumption, plus about a fifth of seaborne LNG. Shipping lanes are about three kilometres wide in each direction.
This is the only entry on the list with no meaningful maritime alternative. Pipeline bypasses exist, principally the Saudi east-west line to the Red Sea and the Emirati line to Fujairah, but their combined spare capacity covers a small fraction of normal flow. Every other chokepoint here offers a detour. Hormuz offers a pipeline queue.
3. Strait of Gibraltar
Around 10 million barrels per day of oil and products, alongside heavy container and vehicle traffic serving Mediterranean transshipment hubs.
Rarely discussed as a chokepoint because it has never been closed in the modern era and closure would be an act against multiple NATO members. Included here because volume-wise it belongs, and because the transshipment complex at its western end concentrates a great deal of European feeder traffic in a small area.
4. Suez Canal and Bab el-Mandeb
On a pre-2023 basis, the Suez route carried something around 9 to 10 percent of global seaborne trade and roughly 7 to 9 million barrels per day of oil and products, with Bab el-Mandeb carrying comparable volumes as the southern gate of the same corridor.
Both figures collapsed after late 2023 as carriers rerouted around the Cape of Good Hope, and recovery has been partial and reversible. The Cape detour adds roughly ten to fourteen days on Asia to Europe voyages, which absorbs vessel capacity, raises fuel and insurance costs and changes the effective supply of ships without a single ship being lost.
Treat Suez and Bab el-Mandeb as one system. Traffic entering one must exit the other, and the risk sits at the southern end.
5. Turkish Straits
The Bosphorus and Dardanelles together carry roughly 3 million barrels per day of oil, along with a large share of Black Sea grain and fertiliser exports.
The Bosphorus is under a kilometre wide at its narrowest and runs through a city of fifteen million people, with a sharp bend that requires pilotage and regularly produces suspensions in fog. Transit is governed by the Montreux Convention, which gives Turkey specific powers over warship passage and makes the strait a political instrument as well as a commercial one.
6. Danish Straits
Roughly 3 million barrels per day, overwhelmingly Russian crude and products moving out of Baltic ports.
Strategically important less for the risk of closure than for what happens in the water: this is the primary transit route for shadow fleet tankers, and therefore the main venue for inspection regimes, insurance verification and ship-to-ship transfer monitoring.
7. Panama Canal
Around 5 percent of global maritime trade and roughly 12,000 to 14,000 transits a year in normal conditions. Critical for US Gulf to Asia LPG and LNG, US east coast to west coast South America container services, and vehicle carriers.
Panama is unique on this list because its constraint is hydrological rather than political. The locks consume fresh water from Gatun Lake per transit, so drought translates directly into reduced daily slots, auction premiums for the slots that remain, and rerouting via Suez or the Cape. The 2023 to 2024 restrictions demonstrated that a canal can be effectively closed by weather.
8. Taiwan Strait
Not an energy chokepoint, and that is why it is misunderstood. Its significance is container and component traffic: a large share of the world’s container fleet passes through in a normal year, and the strait sits adjacent to the concentration of advanced semiconductor production.
Traffic can route east of Taiwan at modest cost. What cannot be rerouted is the production sitting on the island. The strait is a proximity risk, not a transit risk, and analysis that models it like Hormuz misses the mechanism entirely.
9. Sunda and Lombok Straits
Individually modest, jointly essential as the pressure release for Malacca. Lombok is deeper and handles the largest bulk carriers that Malacca’s draught limits exclude. Any Malacca disruption scenario resolves into a Lombok capacity question within days.
10. Bosphorus of the internet: Bab el-Mandeb, Luzon Strait, and the cable corridors
Subsea cable concentration follows shipping geography, and the same narrow waters carry both. The Red Sea corridor hosts a large share of Europe to Asia capacity, and the Luzon Strait between Taiwan and the Philippines is a similar concentration point in the Pacific.
Cable damage in these corridors is usually caused by anchors and fishing gear rather than deliberate action, which is precisely what makes attribution difficult and deterrence weak.
What the ranking hides
Volume measures importance under normal conditions. It does not measure fragility. Hormuz ranks second by throughput and first by consequence, because it is the only one where the alternative is not a longer voyage but no voyage. Panama ranks seventh and has been the most reliably disrupted of the group.
The useful question is never how much passes through. It is how many days the detour adds, and whether a detour exists at all.