Within a few days of the Strait of Hormuz’s closure in 2026, approximately 20 million barrels per day normally transited through this passage, but the volume actually interrupted was estimated at 11–14 million barrels per day — the closure being partial and selective, with partial alternatives existing via bypass pipelines. That is, a major disruption to global oil supplies, to which was added the impact on approximately 19 to 20% of liquefied natural gas exported globally, according to the EIA, IEA, and Congressional Research Service. Energy markets surged. Economists dusted off their 1970s models. And while stagflation comparable to the 1970s had not materialized by late May/early June 2026, serious and officially recognized risks did exist: European Commissioner Dombrovskis spoke of a “stagflationary shock,” the ECB warned of stagflation risks for Germany and Italy, and Wikipedia described “heightened risks of stagflation.”
This gap between fear and the actual event warrants examination. It says something important about the resilience of modern economies in the face of geopolitical shocks, but also about their new vulnerabilities, which do not disappear: they shift.
The Essential Points
- The Strait of Hormuz normally concentrates 20 million barrels per day and approximately 19–20% of global LNG; its partial closure in 2026 caused a price spike while posing serious stagflation risks, recognized by the European Commission and the ECB.
- Europe maintained relatively controlled inflation thanks to abundant strategic stockpiles, diversification of supplies undertaken since 2022, and market mechanisms more resilient than in 1973.
- The 2026 CyclOpe Report estimates that current strategic stockpiles can absorb a Hormuz closure for a limited duration, beyond which the global economy would contract.
- Vulnerability to energy chokepoints does not disappear: it shifts toward critical metals for the transition, whose supply chains are even more geographically concentrated than oil was in 1973.
What 1973 Really Taught Us
The 1973 oil embargo did not merely trigger a recession. It revealed that entire industrialized economies could be brought to their knees by the decision of a cartel of producers. The price of oil quadrupled in a matter of months. Inflation took off in Europe and the United States. Growth collapsed. Western governments, caught off guard, responded with rationing, speed limits, and Sunday driving bans.
Fifty years later, the lesson had borne fruit. The International Energy Agency, created precisely in response to that shock, requires its members to maintain strategic stockpiles representing at minimum 90 days of net imports. The United States established its Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Europe diversified its suppliers, developed regasification terminals, and drew, since 2022, the brutal consequences of its dependence on Russian gas.
When Hormuz closed in 2026, this system played its role. Prices climbed, sometimes sharply depending on markets and segments. But the economies did not buckle. Europe maintained relatively controlled inflation, according to available data via the 2026 CyclOpe Report and IRIS analyses. Markets absorbed the shock because they had the tools to do so: stockpiles, alternative routes, and above all time.
Twenty Million Barrels Without Passing Through the Gulf
Understanding why the crisis was absorbed requires looking at the backup pipelines. The Strait of Hormuz has no simple workaround. The Abqaiq-Yanbu pipeline, which links Saudi Arabia to the Red Sea overland, can divert approximately 5 million barrels per day, far from the 20 million in normal transit. The United Arab Emirates has the ADCO-Fujairah pipeline, capable of transporting up to 1.5 million barrels per day to the Gulf of Oman while bypassing Hormuz.
These are real capacities, but insufficient on their own. What really made the difference, according to the 2026 CyclOpe Report, is the combination of these alternative routes with the coordinated release of strategic stockpiles. Several IEA countries activated their reserves in parallel. This mobilization tempered the price increase and averted physical supply disruptions in developed economies.
The LNG market operated differently. Liquefied natural gas, transported by methane carriers, allows a flexibility that pipeline oil does not: you can redirect a ship en route. Asian buyers accepted premiums to secure their cargoes. European buyers benefited from work done since 2022 to diversify their sources, notably toward the United States and Qatar, and to increase regasification capacities. European LNG’s dependence on transit through Hormuz, while real, was partially covered by other sources.
Strategic Stockpiles Have Limited Absorption Capacity
The resilience demonstrated in 2026 is real. It rests, however, on an explicit condition that the 2026 CyclOpe Report formulates without ambiguity: current strategic stockpiles can absorb a strait closure for a significant duration, but beyond a certain threshold, the global economy would enter contraction.
This limit is both reassuring and concerning. Reassuring because it means that precautionary systems work in the short term. Concerning because a prolonged closure, linked to a sustained armed conflict in the region, would exceed that threshold. Most scenarios of open war between Iran and the United States, or an Iranian blockade in retaliation for strikes on its nuclear installations, foresee disruptions lasting several months, not a few weeks.
The question is therefore not whether economies absorbed the 2026 shock, but under what conditions they could face a longer one. The IEA’s mandated 90 days of stockpiles do not all correspond to imports from the Gulf. The effective coverage rate for a Hormuz blockade varies considerably among countries. Japan, South Korea, and India, which depend on the Gulf for a very significant share of their supplies, would be in a far more exposed position than Germany or France if the closure lasted.
Happy Globalization and Its Chokepoints
The 2026 CyclOpe Report, whose analyses inform this reading, poses a broader question than the mere Hormuz episode. Its conclusion, which RTBF relayed, speaks of the acceleration of the end of happy globalization. This is not about a collapse of world trade, but a recomposition of its logic.
Globalization over the past half-century rested on an implicit assumption: geographic chokepoints would remain stable because the economic interests of states would converge to keep them open. Hormuz illustrates the fragility of that assumption. A state actor can decide to close a strait for political reasons that take precedence over global economic consequences.
What has changed in recent years is the multiplication of these flashpoints. The Suez Canal, the Strait of Malacca, the Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb: each concentrates flows that have no immediate substitute. Houthi attacks at sea in the Red Sea since 2023 had already pushed many shipowners to route around Africa, lengthening journeys by two weeks and raising logistics costs. These disruptions functioned as a full-scale test of global supply chain flexibility.
The lesson drawn by governments and businesses is ambivalent. On one hand, supply chains demonstrated an adaptive capacity superior to what was feared, provided one accepts higher costs. On the other, this adaptation carries a price that is passed on to consumers and businesses, and which is not distributed equally among countries.
Transition Metals Replace Oil as Systemic Vulnerability
The real lesson of the Hormuz crisis may not lie in what it revealed about fossil fuels, but in what it prefigures for the energy transition. Economies seeking to reduce their dependence on oil and gas are building new chains of dependence, equally concentrated geographically, and less mature in terms of strategic stockpiles.
Lithium, cobalt, nickel, rare earths needed for batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines: these materials are extracted and processed in a very restricted number of countries. The Democratic Republic of Congo concentrates approximately 70% of global cobalt production. China controls more than 80% of global rare earth processing. Indonesia and the Philippines dominate nickel. These concentrations are comparable to, if not greater than, those that Gulf oil represented in the 1970s.
The difference, for now, is that geopolitical tensions around these materials have not yet produced a blockade equivalent to Hormuz. But warning signals are accumulating. China has restricted its exports of gallium and germanium since 2023, graphite in 2023-2024, and certain permanent magnets. These restrictions remain partial and contestable within the WTO framework, but they signal a willingness to use mineral dependence as a geopolitical lever.
Strategic stockpiles of critical metals are virtually nonexistent compared to those of oil. No international organization equivalent to the IEA manages reserves of lithium or cobalt. Industrial policies underway in the United States, Europe, and India attempt to address this gap through diversification of supply sources and support for recycling, but they are in initial stages.
What Actors Are Doing Concretely
Facing this redefined vulnerability, several strategies are at work simultaneously. The European Union adopted the Critical Raw Materials Regulation in 2024, which sets targets for diversification and domestic capacity for extraction, processing, and recycling. It is still too early to measure the actual industrial effects, but the regulatory framework exists.
The United States has mobilized the Defense Production Act to support extraction of critical minerals on national territory and in allied countries. Bilateral agreements have been signed with Canada, Australia, and several African countries to secure access to deposits. These partnerships do not resolve short-term dependence, but they are building an alternative supply geography over ten to twenty years.
On oil itself, Gulf producing countries have themselves invested in bypass capacities. Saudi Arabia has increased the capacity of the Abqaiq-Yanbu pipeline. The Emirates have developed the Fujairah terminal. These investments respond to well-understood self-interest: a prolonged Hormuz blockade penalizes first the states whose revenues depend on hydrocarbon exports.
The maritime insurance and logistics world is also adapting. Insurance premiums for transits through the Gulf have risen sharply since tensions in 2019-2020 and episodes in 2023-2026. This increase has two contradictory effects: it raises supply costs, but it also incentivizes private actors to invest in logistics resilience and alternative routes.
Stockpile Absorption Capacity as a Decision Horizon
To return to the absorption limit imposed by available stockpiles is to understand that it defines a decision horizon for governments, not merely a physical constraint. Below this threshold, a Hormuz closure is an absorbable economic shock. Beyond it, it is a systemic crisis.
This asymmetry has implications for public policy. It argues for increasing strategic stockpiles, particularly in the most exposed Asian countries. It argues for accelerated diversification of LNG supply routes. And it suggests that the race toward energy autonomy through renewables is not merely a climate policy: it is a security policy that mechanically reduces exposure to fossil chokepoints.
On this last point, available data show real progress. In 2024, renewables represented approximately 30% of global electricity production according to the International Energy Agency’s data. This share grows by a few percentage points per year. Each percentage point gained represents a portion of energy demand that no longer passes through Hormuz, Malacca, or Bab-el-Mandeb.
But the transition takes time, and economies remain heavily dependent on hydrocarbons for transport, heavy industry, and heating. The reasonable horizon for a significant reduction in this dependence is measured in decades, not years. Until then, fossil chokepoints will remain points of systemic vulnerability, whose closure at Hormuz in 2026 powerfully reminded us of their reality.
The question opening up for decision-makers, in Europe as in Asia, is therefore less whether a new shock will come than deciding how far they are willing to invest so that this absorption capacity is extended, or even becomes immaterial because the dependence itself has been reduced.
Sources
- RTBF, 2026 CyclOpe Report / IRIS: The crisis in the Strait of Hormuz accelerates the end of happy globalization
- International Energy Agency (IEA) — data on strategic stockpiles and renewable electricity production: iea.org
- European Regulation on Critical Raw Materials (Critical Raw Materials Act), adopted in 2024 — European Commission: ec.europa.eu
- IEA – Strait of Hormuz (official primary source)
- EIA – Strait of Hormuz (official primary source)
- IEA – Oil Security and Emergency Response
- 2026 CyclOpe Report (official site)
- European Commission – Critical Raw Materials Act
- IEA – Rare Earth Elements (2024)
- USGS/Makanisi – Cobalt Production DRC 2024
- Federal Reserve History – Oil Shock 1973-74
- IEA – Renewables 2024
- Al Jazeera – Strategic oil reserves 2026