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The World's Busiest Shipping Chokepoints

What a maritime chokepoint is, which straits and canals carry the most ships and oil, and how the 2023-24 Red Sea and Panama Canal disruptions rerouted trade.

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The world’s busiest shipping chokepoints are the Strait of Malacca, the Strait of Hormuz, the Suez Canal and Bab el-Mandeb, the Panama Canal, the Turkish Straits, the Danish Straits, the Strait of Gibraltar and the Dover Strait. Which one is “busiest” depends on what you count. By oil volume, U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates put Malacca first and Hormuz second. By ship numbers, Malacca recorded 94,301 ships reporting in 2024, and the Dover Strait carries over 400 commercial vessels a day. By container trade, UNCTAD estimates that about 22% of containerized trade crosses the Suez Canal in a normal year. The Cape of Good Hope isn’t a chokepoint. It’s the main detour when ships avoid the Red Sea.

What is a maritime chokepoint?

A chokepoint is a narrow passage on a widely used sea route. The EIA describes chokepoints as narrow channels critical to energy trade because of the volumes that pass through them. UNCTAD calls them “strategic, narrow maritime passages” that shorten intercontinental voyages (Review of Maritime Transport 2024). Most can be bypassed, but the EIA notes that blocking a major one, even briefly, “can lead to substantial supply delays and higher shipping costs.”

Why disruptions are costly

  • Longer routes. UNCTAD gives an example: a tanker from Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia to Rotterdam sails 10,358 km via Suez, or 17,975 km around the Cape of Good Hope (UNCTAD, February 2024).
  • More time and more ships. The EIA estimates that diverting oil tankers around the Cape adds about 15 days from the Arabian Sea to Europe. UNCTAD found that rerouting away from the Red Sea raised global ton-mile demand for vessels by 3% and for container ships by 12% in June 2024.
  • Freight and insurance. UNCTAD reports that by mid-2024 the Shanghai Containerized Freight Index had more than doubled from late 2023, and that longer routes raise costs for fuel, crew wages, chartering and insurance (UNCTAD RMT 2024). The EIA says LNG carriers avoided Bab el-Mandeb because of security concerns and high insurance rates.

Busiest by which measure?

No single official ranking covers all chokepoints. Oil flows come from one EIA dataset. Vessel counts come from national traffic authorities, which count differently: ships reporting, vessels controlled or canal transits. Compare figures only within the same source.

Oil flows through chokepoints, in million barrels per day (EIA, World Oil Transit Chokepoints, last updated 3 March 2026):

Route202320241H 2025
Strait of Malacca24.022.523.2
Strait of Hormuz21.820.720.9
Cape of Good Hope (route, not a chokepoint)6.29.39.1
Suez Canal and SUMED pipeline8.84.84.9
Danish Straits5.04.94.9
Bab el-Mandeb9.34.14.2
Turkish Straits (Dardanelles)3.53.63.7
Panama Canal (fiscal years)2.22.02.3 (FY2025)

Figures cover crude oil and petroleum products. Panama figures are fiscal years (October to September).

Strait of Malacca

Malacca links the Indian Ocean and the Pacific and is the shortest sea route from Middle East suppliers to East Asia. The EIA calls it the world’s largest oil chokepoint, with an estimated 23.2 million barrels per day in the first half of 2025. That was 29% of maritime oil flows. About 9.2 billion cubic feet per day of LNG also passed through it in that period.

It is also one of the busiest by ship count. Malaysia’s Marine Department recorded 94,301 ships reporting under STRAITREP, the mandatory ship reporting system for the Straits of Malacca and Singapore, in 2024, and 102,525 in 2025. The alternatives are the Sunda and Lombok straits or a longer route around the Indonesian archipelago. Live page: Strait of Malacca.

Strait of Hormuz

Hormuz connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman. In the first half of 2025, the EIA estimated oil flows of 20.9 million barrels per day, about 20% of global petroleum liquids consumption, plus 11.4 billion cubic feet per day of LNG, over 20% of global LNG trade. Saudi and UAE pipelines could provide about 4.7 million barrels per day of bypass capacity, according to the EIA. Those are pre-2026 figures: after a Middle East conflict began on 28 February 2026, the IEA reported that Hormuz crude and product exports had fallen below 10% of pre-conflict levels by 11 March (IEA). For more detail and a dated timeline, read the Strait of Hormuz explained. Live page: Strait of Hormuz.

Suez Canal

The Suez Canal links the Red Sea and the Mediterranean. UNCTAD’s 2024 review estimates that about 10% of world maritime trade by volume and 22% of containerized trade cross it annually.

The Suez Canal Authority’s navigation statistics show how sharply traffic fell after the Red Sea attacks. The canal handled 26,434 vessels in 2023, a daily average of 72.4. In 2024 it handled 13,213, a daily average of 36.1. In 2025 it handled 12,758. Oil through the canal and the parallel SUMED pipeline fell from 8.8 million barrels per day in 2023 to 4.8 million in 2024 (EIA). Live page: Suez Canal.

Bab el-Mandeb

Bab el-Mandeb sits between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula, at the southern entrance to the Red Sea, so ships sailing between Suez and the Indian Ocean pass through it. The EIA dates the start of Houthi attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea to November 2023. After that, many vessels switched to the Cape of Good Hope.

UNCTAD measured the shift in two steps. Ship tonnage entering the Gulf of Aden fell by over 70% between the first half of December 2023 and the first half of February 2024 (UNCTAD, February 2024). By mid-2024, tonnage crossing the Gulf of Aden was down 76%, tonnage through Suez was down 70%, and arrivals at the Cape of Good Hope were up 89% (UNCTAD RMT 2024). EIA data show oil through the strait falling from 9.3 million barrels per day in 2023 to 4.1 million in 2024, with LNG flows near zero in 2024 and the first half of 2025. Live page: Bab el-Mandeb.

Panama Canal

The Panama Canal links the Atlantic and Pacific and handles about 3% of global maritime trade volume (UNCTAD RMT 2024). Its locks run on fresh water from Gatun Lake, so drought limits traffic.

In 2023 the Panama Canal Authority cut capacity in stages. Its Advisory to Shipping A-48-2023 of 30 October 2023 says capacity had been about 32 vessels per day since 30 July 2023. It said October 2023 rainfall was the lowest on record since 1950 (41% below). Daily booking slots were cut to 25 and then 24 in November, 22 in December, 20 in January 2024 and 18 from 1 February 2024, to avoid cutting the maximum draft below 13.41 m (44 feet).

The authority reported 9,944 deep-draft transits in fiscal 2024, 21% fewer than in fiscal 2023. By fiscal 2026 the canal maintained a maximum draft of 50 feet throughout the dry season. Live page: Panama Canal.

Turkish Straits (Bosporus and Dardanelles)

The Bosporus (17 nautical miles) and the Dardanelles (37 nautical miles) link the Black Sea to the Mediterranean through the Sea of Marmara. The EIA says the straits are less than half a nautical mile wide at the narrowest point, and that more than 45,000 vessels passed through them in 2024. In the first half of 2025, oil flows were 3.3 million barrels per day through the Bosporus and 3.7 million through the Dardanelles.

Merchant shipping through the straits is governed by the 1936 Montreux Convention. Its Article 2 gives merchant vessels in peacetime “complete freedom of transit and navigation,” by day and night, under any flag and with any cargo, subject to sanitary control and the charges allowed in its annex (unofficial text, NUS Centre for International Law). UNCTAD notes that Türkiye brought in new safety and environmental rules in September 2023, and that ships faced delays while operators adapted. Live page: Bosporus Strait.

Danish Straits and the Oresund

The Danish Straits connect the Baltic Sea to the North Sea, and the Oresund between Denmark and Sweden is one of them. The EIA estimated 4.9 million barrels per day of oil through the Danish Straits in the first half of 2025, 6% of global maritime oil trade and almost 60% more than in 2021, after Russian trade flows shifted. The figure covers all the straits, not the Oresund alone.

Ships of 300 gross tonnage and above must report to Sound VTS under the IMO’s SOUNDREP system, in force since 1 September 2011. Live page: Oresund Strait.

Strait of Gibraltar

Gibraltar is the Atlantic gateway to the Mediterranean, used by Suez traffic to and from northern Europe and the Americas. Spain’s maritime safety agency, Salvamento Marítimo, monitors the Strait of Gibraltar traffic separation scheme from its Tarifa coordination centre and publishes vessel-control figures in its annual report. Those counts are per coordination centre, so they are not a count of transits through the strait alone. The EIA does not publish an oil-flow estimate for Gibraltar. Live page: Strait of Gibraltar.

Dover Strait

The UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency says over 400 commercial vessels use the Dover Strait every day, with more than 100 cross-channel ferry movements on top. The strait is under full radar surveillance. Channel VTS is run jointly by Dover Coastguard and France’s CROSS Gris-Nez, and vessels over 300 gross tonnes must report before entering.

Live page: Strait of Dover.

Cape of Good Hope: the alternative route

The Cape isn’t a narrow strait. It’s the main alternative when ships avoid Suez and Bab el-Mandeb. The EIA estimated that 9.1 million barrels per day of oil went around the Cape in the first half of 2025, 11% of seaborne oil trade and 3 million barrels per day more than in 2022. LNG around the Cape peaked at 7.8 billion cubic feet per day in 2024. Live page: Cape of Good Hope.

Following chokepoint traffic

Official reports like these appear months after the events they describe. The chokepoints index lists all chokepoints. Each live page shows daily ship transits compared with normal traffic, and the weekly reports sum up each completed week. See also shipping, ports and supply-chain disruption.

Sources

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