ASTANA, July 12 — A prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz would hit global oil markets harder than any disruption in modern history, threatening the flow of roughly 20% of the world’s daily petroleum consumption. The stakes are enormous for Central Asia’s energy exporters, who would face both opportunity and risk as prices surge. Data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows the strait carried about 17 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products in 2023.
That volume represents roughly 20% of global consumption, making the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman the world’s most critical oil chokepoint. Officials noted that any sustained blockage would immediately tighten supply across Asia and Europe.
Analysts at Goldman Sachs warned in April 2025 that a prolonged closure could push Brent crude above $150 per barrel. That would exceed the all-time record of $147 set in 2008. For context, Brent averaged $82 per barrel in 2023.
A spike of that magnitude would reshape trade flows, refinery margins, and government budgets from Nur-Sultan to New Delhi. The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve held about 370 million barrels as of March 2025, the data shows.
That is down from 695 million in 2020. The current administration inherits a significantly smaller cushion. China, the world’s largest crude importer at about 11.3 million barrels per day in 2023, has limited strategic reserves.
India, which imported about 4.7 million barrels per day that same year, also maintains modest stockpiles relative to its consumption. Both nations depend heavily on Persian Gulf shipments that transit the Strait of Hormuz. The United States itself imports only about 0.5 million barrels per day from the Persian Gulf region, according to 2023 figures.
But officials noted that global price spikes would still hit American consumers at the pump, because crude oil trades on a world market. A price above $150 would raise gasoline and diesel costs across the country regardless of domestic production levels.
The International Energy Agency coordinates emergency stockpile releases among its member nations. The agency’s total government-held reserves amount to about 1.5 billion barrels, the data shows. That figure includes the U.S. SPR as well as strategic holdings in other industrialized economies.
For Kazakhstan, a major non-OPEC oil producer, the calculus is complex. Higher prices would boost export revenues for state-owned companies and international partners operating in major fields.
But the country’s export routes to world markets run through pipelines to the Black Sea and China, not through Hormuz, insulating it from direct supply disruption. Central Asian energy officials are watching the situation closely. The region’s pipeline infrastructure offers an alternative supply route for Asian buyers seeking to replace lost Persian Gulf barrels.
But Kazakhstan’s export capacity is constrained by aging infrastructure and limited pipeline access to the east. The 2008 record of $147 per barrel was driven by a combination of surging demand, geopolitical tensions, and speculative trading. A Hormuz closure would be a purely physical supply disruption — the most direct kind — and analysts at Goldman Sachs see the potential for even higher prices this time around.
The company said its analysis assumed a prolonged closure lasting several weeks or months. Such a scenario would require coordinated releases from the IEA’s 1.5 billion barrels of government-held reserves, plus possible diplomatic intervention to reopen the strait.
What to watch next: The IEA’s emergency response procedures, the status of U.S. SPR releases, and whether China and India accelerate their own strategic stockpile building. For Central Asian producers, the question is whether higher prices can be sustained long enough to justify new investment in export capacity.
Sources
{“@context”: “https://schema.org”, “@type”: “NewsArticle”, “headline”: “Global Oil Markets Brace for Hormuz Closure Disruption”, “description”: “ASTANA, July 12 — A prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz would hit global oil markets harder than any disruption in modern history, threatening…”, “datePublished”: “2026-07-12T09:30:00+00:00”, “author”: {“@type”: “Person”, “name”: “Aibek Nurlan”}, “publisher”: {“@type”: “Organization”, “name”: “InfoPulse Today”, “url”: “https://newsfeed.infopulsetoday.com/”}, “citation”: [{“@type”: “CreativeWork”, “url”: “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum”}]}
