Disruption Scenario

What happens if the Panama Canal closes?

Closing Panama Canal halts 1 Mb/d, which the available bypass capacity (1 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)

Mb/d bypass capacity

Mb/d displaced (0%)

Model the closure

100% halted

OpenPartialFull closure

Mb/d halted

Mb/d bypass

Mb/d displaced · 0%

Bypass routes

Cape Horn / Strait of Magellansea+1 Mb/d
Always available and always long — roughly 15 extra days from the US Gulf to Asia.

Sea reroute adds roughly 15 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, Peru — absent from the cover ranking, not necessarily well covered.

Thinnest stock cover

Exposed importers holding fewer than 30 days of consumption in reported stock, from the Joint Organisations Data Initiative. Thin cover is who feels a sustained disruption soonest — not a prediction that they will.

Chile28 days · 2026-04

Refining capacity exposed

The exposed importing countries hold 12,661 kb/d of refining capacity across 47 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.