Why the World Is Scrambling to Reopen Hormuz Without America

In the first week of April 2026, history delivered a brutal lesson in humility. Thirty-five nations—spanning Europe, East Asia, the Gulf, and beyond—convened urgently, not in grand halls of ideology, but in the cold calculus of survival.

The United Kingdom hosted the virtual summit. France, Germany, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the UAE, Australia, Canada, Norway, and two dozen others joined. Their singular mission was to devise a workable path to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The United States received no invitation. President Trump’s response was characteristically direct: America’s shale-driven energy abundance had changed the equation. Allies dependent on the Gulf should “go get their own oil.”

The message landed like a slap. For decades, the U.S. Navy had quietly underwritten the security of this vital artery. Now, with Washington stepping back, the rest of the industrialized world confronted an uncomfortable truth: their prosperity had been built on a fragile, narrow waterway they could no longer take for granted.

At its narrowest, the Strait of Hormuz spans just 21 miles. For years, it carried roughly 20 million barrels per day of crude oil, condensate, and refined products—approximately 20% of global oil consumption and about 27% of all seaborne traded oil and petroleum products.

Roughly one-fifth of the world’s LNG also exited through this chokepoint, primarily from Qatar and the UAE. In normal times, over 100 vessels transited daily, the majority tankers and gas carriers.

Today, that flow has been reduced to a pathetic trickle. Reliable maritime tracking shows tanker and gas carrier transits down by 93-96% in March 2026 compared to the previous year. On many days, fewer than 6-10 vessels make the passage.

Thousands of ships—estimates run as high as 2,000—are stalled, loitering, or rerouted at enormous cost. Insurance markets have effectively priced out most commercial traffic. The International Energy Agency’s executive director, Fatih Birol, did not mince words: this represents the greatest threat to global energy security in history, surpassing the combined shocks of the 1970s oil crises and the 2022 Russian gas disruptions.

What makes this crisis especially punishing is its wildly uneven impact. About 84% of the crude and condensate that once flowed through Hormuz was destined for Asian markets.

China alone accounted for nearly 38% of those flows in recent data. India took around 15%, South Korea 12%, and Japan 11%. Together with other Asian destinations, they absorbed nearly 89% of the oil and 83% of the LNG.

Japan sources the overwhelming majority—up to 95%—of its crude from the broader Middle East, with a huge share routing through this single strait. South Korea’s dependence hovers near 70%. India draws roughly 42-53% of its oil imports from the region, while China, despite aggressive diversification, still relies on Hormuz-linked supplies for a critical 40-45% slice of certain import streams.

These are not abstract percentages. They translate into idling factories in Guangdong and Maharashtra, strained power grids in Tokyo and Seoul, and logistics nightmares that ripple through global supply chains for everything from semiconductors to automobiles.

Europe feels secondary but painful effects—global price spikes, LNG rerouting costs, and fertilizer shocks. Even the United States, with direct Hormuz-linked imports representing only about 2% of its petroleum consumption, faces higher pump prices and inflationary pressure because oil is a globally priced commodity.

Yet America’s shale revolution gives it options the others lack. Trump’s bluntness reflects this new reality: Washington is no longer willing to bear disproportionate costs for securing energy flows that primarily benefit others.

The crisis exposes how deeply interconnected modern life has become. The Gulf region is a major hub for nitrogen fertilizers. Roughly 30% of globally traded urea and significant shares of ammonia and sulfur normally move through or originate near Hormuz.

Since the effective closure, urea prices have surged 40-56%—jumping from around $480-500 per ton pre-crisis to $700-750 or higher in spot markets. This is not a niche commodity story. Nitrogen fertilizers underpin roughly 20% of grain production costs in many regions.

Higher input prices force farmers to either absorb losses, reduce application (risking lower yields), or pass costs downstream. In import-dependent countries across Asia and parts of Africa, this threatens food affordability at a moment when planting seasons are underway.

Every additional rupee or yen spent on urea eventually shows up in the price of rice, bread, or cooking oil. The “most dangerous dependency,” as one observer noted, is the one you ignore until the supply chain snaps.

Globalization promised seamless efficiency. Instead, we built a system where a handful of fast-attack boats, mines, or missiles in a 21-mile channel can paralyze the energy and agricultural inputs for billions. The illusion of frictionless trade has been exposed as dangerously thin.

Desperate workarounds are underway but reveal the limits of quick fixes. Saudi Arabia has ramped up its East-West pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, pushing flows toward 5-6 million barrels per day and approaching full capacity of around 7 million.

The UAE has increased usage of its pipeline to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman. Combined spare bypass capacity across the region, however, likely tops out at 3.5-5.5 million barrels per day at best—nowhere near enough to replace 20 million. Pipelines cannot move LNG. They cannot instantly absorb the full volume. And they introduce new vulnerabilities, including their own chokepoints and maintenance challenges.

Meanwhile, strategic reserves are being tapped aggressively. The IEA coordinated a historic release of 400 million barrels from member stockpiles—an extraordinary buffer, but one that buys time rather than solves the underlying problem.

Demand-side measures—efficiency drives, industrial slowdowns, and conservation—are being urged, yet they cannot fully offset a structural supply shock of this magnitude.

This moment forces a reckoning with energy realism. For years, many nations pursued ambitious decarbonization targets while quietly depending on stable fossil fuel imports from unstable regions. Europe learned a harsh version of this lesson with Russian gas in 2022.

Asia is now living an even more acute version. Diversification efforts—renewables, nuclear restarts, new LNG terminals—take years or decades to scale. In the interim, physical geography and naval power still determine who eats and who drives.

The U.S. position, for all its bluntness, highlights a structural shift. Decades of American security provision allowed allies to underinvest in their own resilience and diversification. Trump’s “go get your own oil” is less isolationism than a demand for burden-sharing and realism.

Nations that benefit most from open sea lanes must now contribute meaningfully to securing them—through diplomacy, naval assets, insurance mechanisms, or accelerated infrastructure.

Reopening Hormuz will require more than wishful thinking. It demands:

• Credible maritime security arrangements, potentially involving multinational escorts once immediate threats subside.
• Diplomatic pressure and incentives tied to safe passage, including possible sanctions relief calibrated to behavior.
• Accelerated investment in bypass capacity, strategic storage, and non-Gulf energy sources.
• Honest domestic conversations about balancing climate goals with energy security and affordability.

Even if shipping resumes soon, scars will linger: elevated risk premiums, damaged infrastructure (reports indicate dozens of energy assets hit across the region), eroded trust, and higher baseline prices. Full normalization could take months.

The gathering of 35 nations is not primarily about anti-American signaling. It is an admission of vulnerability and a pragmatic attempt at self-help.

For Japan and South Korea, with massive strategic reserves (hundreds of days of coverage), the crisis tests the limits of those buffers.

For India and China, it highlights the strategic risks of concentrated import dependence. For Europe, it reinforces that energy policy cannot be detached from hard power and geography.

The Strait of Hormuz has always been there—quiet, narrow, indispensable. Most maps showed it as a footnote; now it dominates economic briefings worldwide. This episode should bury forever the naive belief that technology and finance can fully transcend physical realities.

A 21-mile bottleneck still holds disproportionate sway over global growth because we allowed excessive concentration and underinvestment in resilience.

Reopening the strait is urgent, but it must be paired with longer-term wisdom: diversified supply chains, realistic energy mixes (including nuclear and transitional hydrocarbons), maintained naval capabilities for freedom of navigation, and alliances built on mutual contribution rather than one-sided guarantees.

The world’s factories, power plants, farms, and households are connected to that narrow stretch of water in ways we rarely acknowledged.

The current crisis is painful, but if it forces a more sober, resilient approach to energy security, some good may yet emerge from the disruption. Ignoring critical infrastructure until it fails is a luxury no modern economy can afford twice.

The 35 nations meeting today understand this. Whether they translate awareness into durable action—beyond short-term diplomacy—will determine if this shock becomes a temporary spike or a lasting lesson in humility and realism.

Naorem Mohen

Naorem Mohen is the Editor of Signpost News. Explore his views and opinion on X: @laimacha.