Disruption Scenario

What happens if the Strait of Malacca closes?

Closing Strait of Malacca halts 16 Mb/d, which the available bypass capacity (16.2 Mb/d) can nominally absorb in full — at the cost of distance rather than volume.

Chokepoint detail →Open on the map →

Mb/d halted (full closure)

16.2

Mb/d bypass capacity

Mb/d displaced (0%)

Model the closure

100% halted

OpenPartialFull closure

Mb/d halted

16.2

Mb/d bypass

Mb/d displaced · 0%

Bypass routes

Lombok / Makassar Straitsea+16 Mb/d
Deep enough for any hull; costs distance, not capacity. The constraint is days and freight, not throughput.
Myanmar–China crude pipeline+0.2 Mb/d
Kyaukphyu → Kunming. Small relative to the strait, but it bypasses it entirely.

Sea reroute adds roughly 3 days each way — tonnage, not throughput, is the first constraint.

The sea reroute has no throughput limit, so the shortfall reads as zero — but it consumes tonnage. Expect freight rates, not volumes, to absorb the shock first.
No stock cover reported to JODI by China — absent from the cover ranking, not necessarily well covered.

Refining capacity exposed

The exposed importing countries hold 12,874 kb/d of refining capacity across 45 refineries. This is capacity that sits in exposed countries — not a claim about which refineries buy crude through this route, which is sourcing data the atlas does not hold.

Indicative planning arithmetic over published transit volumes and nameplate bypass capacity. It is not a supply forecast: it models neither price response, demand destruction, inventory release, spare production capacity, nor how quickly tonnage can physically reposition. Nameplate capacity is consistently higher than day-one deliverable capacity.