Speculative oil pipelines offer alternative to Strait of Hormuz choke point

Concerns about the vulnerability of the passage of oil through the Strait of Hormuz ebb and flow depending on the international mood over Iran, writes Digby Lidstone

ON A TYPICAL day, about 50 oil tankers carrying up to 17m barrels of crude and refined products pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Put another way, this narrow choke point accounts for nearly 40% of the world's seaborne oil supplies, and a fifth of the oil traded globally every day. Concerns about the vulnerability of the Strait of Hormuz have tended to ebb and flow depending on the international mood over Iran. Tensions reached a high water mark in June 2008, when Ali Mohammed Jafari, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, said that if Iran was attacked by the US or Israel, it would wreak havoc in the energy markets by sealing off the strait. Military strategists are divided about h