Shipping chokepoints after eighteen months of Red Sea diversion

Eighteen months after Houthi attacks began in November 2023, energy shipping still carries the scar tissue. EIA measured Bab el-Mandeb oil flows at 4.0 million barrels per day through August 2024 versus 8.7 million in 2023, with Cape flows up to 9.2 from 6.0 million barrels per day. Kpler documented the halt of Bab el-Mandeb LNG transits by February 2024 and noted that only 8% of global LNG had used the Red Sea in the year before October 2023.

Those facts have not been repealed by familiarity. Longer routes remain a tax on landed costs and a reduction in effective fleet capacity. EIA's 2023 figures of 20.9 million barrels per day of oil and about one-fifth of global LNG through Hormuz remain the planning anchors until newer annual prints supersede them. July 2025 is also when Northern Hemisphere storage refill for the next winter coincides with tropical storm risk in the Atlantic LNG export region and with maintenance seasons.

Market participants should also keep an eye on inventory quality, not only inventory quantity. The Transition Economics Institute tagline, Making the transition add up, is used here as an engineering standard rather than a slogan. Second-order couplings deserve routine attention: power prices feeding industrial gas demand; Chinese LNG swings releasing or absorbing Atlantic cargoes; coal import cycles altering dry-bulk freight; mineral export controls raising equipment costs for the renewables that cut fossil demand. Risk communication to non-specialist audiences should separate three layers: the physical flow change, the price transmission channel, and the policy response option. Governance timelines should be mapped beside price charts on the same page.