Oil and gas are the biggest commodity markets on Earth — and in 2026 they are being run through a 33-kilometre gap of water. Iran shut the Strait of Hormuz to normal traffic on 2 March, a fifth of the world's oil and LNG stopped moving, physical Brent set an all-time record, IEA members emptied 400 million barrels of emergency stocks, and Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iraq rerouted what they could through pipelines that were never meant to carry it all. This page tracks where oil and gas come from, how they move, who can stop them and who profits when they stop — using open data from the EIA, IEA, OPEC, the Energy Institute, BGS and tanker-tracking analysts. Built for energy businesses, geopolitics researchers and think tanks.
0of oil moved through Hormuz in early 2025 — about one barrel in five consumed worldwide (EIA)
0got through in the second quarter of 2026, with 5–8 mb/d of Gulf output shut in (EIA / IEA)
0Dated Brent on 7 April 2026 — the highest physical price ever assessed (Platts)
0of emergency oil stocks released by IEA members from 11 March — the largest action ever
Interactive map
The oil and gas world map
Giant fields and shale basins, export terminals, refineries and LNG plants, the eight maritime chokepoints that carry most of the world's seaborne energy, and the sites disrupted by war, sanctions and drones in 2026 — from Ghawar and the Permian to Ras Laffan, Kharg Island and the Caspian pipeline terminal at Novorossiysk. Tap a marker for details; toggle layers below. Circle size ≈ scale.
Field / basinTerminal / refinery / LNGChokepointDisrupted / sanctioned
From reservoir to benchmark
One barrel, many prices
There is no single oil price and no single gas price. Crude trades against a ladder of benchmarks set by quality and geography; refined products trade on their own margins; gas prices in three continents barely talk to each other — and in 2026 a growing share of the world's hydrocarbons is priced by decree: capped, tolled, blockaded or stockpiled. Tap a marker to see how each price is made and where it stood as the year unfolded.
Crude benchmarksRefined productsGas & LNGPriced by politics
From reservoir to pump and burner, step by step
The oil route (top) feeds transport and petrochemicals; the gas route (bottom) feeds power, heat and industry. Both funnel through the same handful of straits. Scroll sideways on mobile →
Shares: Energy Institute Statistical Review 2026 (oil demand 103 mb/d in 2025; gas ~4,200 bcm); IEA Gas Market Report (LNG ≈ 13% of gas consumed); IEA Oil Market Report August 2026 (2026 demand −1.6 mb/d); EIA STEO August 2026 (Hormuz flows); RBN Energy / Argus (US Gulf Coast diesel crack $102/bbl, 17 August 2026). The dashed link is gas-to-liquids and NGLs — the growing overlap between the two routes.
Well to wheel — and well to burner
The journey of a barrel and a cargo
From a Permian frac crew or a Ghawar water-injection well to the pump, the jet engine and the gas turbine — and from Qatar's North Field to a regasification jetty in Zeebrugge or Chittagong. Six stages, each with its own bottleneck, and in 2026 the bottleneck is stage three.
← swipe →
Production & reserves
Where oil comes from — and what stopped
Crude oil production by country, 2025
Million barrels per day of crude oil and lease condensate (EIA, January–November 2025 annualised)
Source: EIA International Energy Statistics via Visual Capitalist (May 2026). World crude and condensate output was about 83 mb/d; total liquids including NGLs, biofuels and refinery gain ~106 mb/d (EIA STEO). The US set an all-time national record of 13.6 mb/d in 2025; EIA expects 13.8 in 2026 and 14.2 in 2027.
Source: OPEC Annual Statistical Bulletin 2026 for all countries except Canada, whose figure includes oil sands (Canada Energy Regulator basis; OPEC counts only ~5 billion barrels of conventional Canadian crude). On OPEC's basis the world total is ~1,567 billion barrels — about 47 years of 2025 consumption.
The shut-in ledger: what the Hormuz closure took offline
Crude production in February 2026 (before the war) vs estimated production shut in during July 2026, thousand barrels per day (EIA STEO, August 2026)
Source: EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook, August 2026, Table 1. Gulf shut-ins averaged 10.05 mb/d in March–May, 7.48 mb/d in June and 5.46 mb/d in July; EIA forecasts 6.6 mb/d for 3Q26, 4.2 mb/d in 4Q26 and 1.6 mb/d in 1Q27, with ~0.6 mb/d still disrupted through end-2027. The UAE restored full output by June via the ADCOP pipeline to Fujairah; Iran's shut-ins reflect the US naval blockade rather than the strait. The IEA counted 8.3 mb/d of Gulf output still shut in during July on its broader basis.
Half a century of crude — and the price it fetched
World crude petroleum production (million tonnes, left) vs the annual-average Brent spot price ($/bbl, right), 2000–2025
Sources: BGS World Mineral Statistics (crude petroleum production, 2000–2024, sum of reporting countries); EIA (Brent Europe spot annual averages; 2025 ≈ $69). Output has grown ~24% since 2000 with only two real dips — the 2009 recession and 2020's pandemic — while the price has swung from $25 to $112 and back. 2026 is not on the chart yet: EIA expects Brent to average $87 for the year.
BGS publishes long-run crude petroleum, natural gas and coal production series for every producing country back to 1970 — browse them country by country in the data explorer.
Gas & LNG
The gas shock nobody hedged
Gas was the quiet market of the 2020s recovery: US shale had made America the largest producer and, in 2025, the largest LNG exporter on Earth, and a wave of new liquefaction was about to turn shortage into glut. Then Iranian missiles hit Ras Laffan and the strait through which a fifth of the world's LNG sails was closed. The result is a market split in three: cheap gas in America, rationed gas in South Asia, and Europe outbidding everyone to refill its storage before winter.
Natural gas production by country
Billion cubic metres, 2025 or latest available year
Sources: Energy Institute Statistical Review 2026 / OPEC ASB 2026 (US 1,116 bcm and Iran 280 bcm in 2025; others 2024 values, Russia and China rounded estimates). The US alone produced about a quarter of the world's ~4,200 bcm; world output grew 1.3% in 2025. Iran's South Pars complex — 12% of its gas — was struck on 18 March 2026.
Who exported the LNG, 2025
Billion cubic feet per day of LNG exports (world record 56.3 Bcf/d ≈ 437 million tonnes)
Sources: EIA Today in Energy (global LNG trade 2025; US 15.1 Bcf/d, Qatar 10.6 Bcf/d; top three 63%); Kpler via TradeArabia (436.98 Mt, +6.3%); other countries approximate from GIIGNL/IGU. The US supplied 93% of 2025 export growth and shipped 111 Mt — the first country ever above 100 Mt in a year. EIA sees US exports at 17.4 Bcf/d in 2026 and 18.6 in 2027.
Who bought it
LNG imports by market, 2025, million tonnes (Kpler basis, approximate)
Sources: Kpler via Baird Maritime / TradeArabia (Europe 126.2 Mt, +26.1 Mt; Asia Pacific 168.7 Mt, −9.2 Mt); SunSirs / customs data (Japan 67.4 Mt, South Korea 48.7 Mt; China −16%, India −11% year on year). Europe drove all the growth in 2025 as it replaced Russian pipeline gas; in 2026 it is competing with Asia for the same cargoes Qatar can no longer send.
Three gas markets, three realities
What the Ras Laffan strikes and the Hormuz closure did to each region
🇶🇦The Qatar hole
Missile strikes on 18–19 March damaged two LNG trains and a gas-to-liquids plant, knocking out ~17% of Qatar's capacity (12.8 Mt/yr) for an estimated three to five years and, by QatarEnergy's own count, $20 billion a year of revenue. Force majeure notices to buyers in China, South Korea, Italy, Belgium, Pakistan and Bangladesh now run into November 2026; Edison alone has lost 29 cargoes. The 110 Mt/yr North Field East expansion has slipped to a fourth-quarter 2026 start.
🌏Asia pays the spot price
Asian spot LNG (JKM) hit $23.39/MMBtu on 28 August, a four-year high, after a 140% jump in the days following the Ras Laffan attack. Pakistan and Bangladesh — the most Qatar-dependent buyers — face cancellations through October; the Philippines declared an energy emergency on 24 March; Bangladesh ordered shopping centres shut by early evening. Japan, with a wide contract portfolio and little Qatari LNG, is the best insulated.
🇪🇺Europe refills at any price
EU storage stood at 50 bcm (46% full) on 23 June — 15 bcm below the five-year average — and TTF has climbed back above €70/MWh, its highest since January 2023, as Europe outbids Asia for cargoes. The regulatory clock is also running: the EU's stepwise ban ends Russian LNG imports from 1 January 2027 and pipeline gas by 30 September 2027, while Hungary and Slovakia still draw on TurkStream.
🇺🇸America's insulated market
Henry Hub is forecast at just $2.87/MMBtu for 3Q26 — record storage of ~3,985 Bcf expected by end-October and 111 Bcf/d of dry-gas production have kept US prices in a different universe from Asia and Europe. Golden Pass shipped its first cargo on 22 April, Corpus Christi Stage 3 reached substantial completion on 28 August, and Plaquemines' second phase lands by mid-2027: the LNG wave is arriving exactly when the world needs it.
~20%of the world's LNG passed through the Strait of Hormuz before the war — essentially all of Qatar's exports plus the UAE's. No pipeline can bypass it for gas: unlike crude, Qatari LNG has no Red Sea alternative (IEA / EIA).
Concentration risk
Eight straits and a canal
Oil's chokepoints are geographic, not industrial: almost all of the roughly 80 million barrels a day that move by sea pass through a handful of narrow waterways, and two of them — Hormuz and Malacca — carried more than half of it. In 2026 the first was closed and the second was being watched. The bypass pipelines that exist can move about nine of Hormuz's twenty million barrels, and the Red Sea route they feed became a target of its own on 20 July.
20.9 → 4.9
million barrels a day of oil through the Strait of Hormuz: first half of 2025 vs the second quarter of 2026 (EIA). How the world's oil chokepoints compared before the war:
Source: EIA World Oil Transit Chokepoints (updated 3 March 2026), crude oil and petroleum liquids, first half of 2025. Malacca handled ~29% of global seaborne oil; Hormuz ~27%, of which ~15 mb/d was crude and condensate. Bab el-Mandeb flows rose from 5.4 mb/d in 4Q25 to 8.1 mb/d in 2Q26 as Saudi crude was rerouted to Yanbu — then the Houthis declared a blockade on Saudi shipping.
The bypass ledger
What can move around Hormuz — and what cannot
🇸🇦Petroline to Yanbu · 7 mb/d
Aramco's East-West pipeline carried 770,000 b/d before the war; by 10 March its CEO said it would hit full capacity "in the next couple of days", and it has since run at an all-time record of 7 mb/d. Yanbu crude exports reached ~5 mb/d plus 700–900 kb/d of products — enough to hold Saudi exports at a 7 mb/d ceiling. Everything above that stays in the ground: 2.07 mb/d was shut in during July.
🇦🇪ADCOP to Fujairah · 1.5 mb/d
The Habshan–Fujairah line lets Abu Dhabi load on the Gulf of Oman side of the strait; Fujairah exports rose from 1.17 mb/d in February to 1.62 mb/d in March and the UAE was back to full production by June — the only Gulf producer to fully escape. A new West-East pipeline, 50% built, is being fast-tracked for early 2027 so the UAE need never use Hormuz again.
🇮🇶Kirkuk–Ceyhan · 1.6 mb/d nominal
Reopened in September 2025 after a two-and-a-half-year closure, the northern line to Türkiye became Iraq's only working export route — but carried just 200,000–250,000 b/d. Baghdad has approved a plan to lift it to 770,000 b/d. Iraq's exports fell from 3.4 mb/d to 10 million barrels for the whole of April, and its budget breaks even near $86 a barrel.
⛔No bypass at all
Kuwait exported zero crude in April — its first total halt since 1991 — and expects 2026 output of 1.84 mb/d against 2.47 in 2025. Qatar's LNG, Bahrain's crude and Iran's Kharg Island exports all depend on the strait; Iran's cargoes are additionally blocked by the US Navy. Kuwait's port calls fell 86%, the UAE's 69%, Qatar's, Iraq's and Bahrain's about two-thirds.
Sources: S&P Global (Aramco CEO, 10 March 2026); Fortune and Bloomberg (Petroline 7 mb/d, Yanbu records); Kpler via Al Jazeera (Fujairah, ADCOP); CNBC and Kpler (Iraq–Türkiye ramp, UAE West-East pipeline); Iraqi oil ministry via Iraqi News and Shafaq; Kuwait Times and AGBI; Gibson Shipbrokers via Al Jazeera (port calls); EIA STEO August 2026 (shut-ins).
Geopolitics
From shale glut to the closed strait
A decade ago the story of oil was abundance: American shale broke OPEC's pricing power and forced it into an alliance with Russia. Then came a pandemic that briefly priced a barrel below zero, an invasion that rewired Europe's gas, and a war that closed the world's most important oil chokepoint for the first time in history.
2014–2020
Shale, OPEC+ and the barrel below zero
US tight oil doubles American output and crashes Brent from $112 (2012 average) to $44 (2016). OPEC responds by recruiting Russia and nine others into "OPEC+" in December 2016. The pandemic then does what no cartel could: on 20 April 2020 the expiring WTI contract settles at −$37.63 a barrel and OPEC+ cuts a record 9.7 mb/d.
2022
Invasion, Nord Stream and the price cap
Russia invades Ukraine on 24 February; Brent averages $101 for the year and European gas peaks above €300/MWh. IEA members release 182 million barrels — a record at the time. The Nord Stream pipelines are destroyed in September; the EU bans seaborne Russian crude and the G7 caps its price at $60 from 5 December. Russia redirects its barrels to India and China, and a "shadow fleet" of ageing tankers is born.
2023–2024
Cuts, the Red Sea and a record 2025
Eight OPEC+ producers add 1.65 mb/d of "voluntary" cuts in April 2023 on top of earlier ones. Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping from late 2023 push container lines and many tankers around the Cape of Good Hope; Ukraine ended Russian gas transit on 1 January 2025. US crude production sets a record 13.6 mb/d in 2025 and US LNG exports hit 111 million tonnes as the country becomes the world's largest LNG seller; global LNG trade reaches a record 437 Mt.
Apr–Dec 2025
OPEC+ starts unwinding; Washington sanctions Rosneft
From April OPEC+ begins returning barrels to a market EIA still expected to be oversupplied, with Brent forecast near $51 for 2026. On 22 October the US Treasury sanctions Rosneft and Lukoil outright — Russia's two largest exporters. On 30 November OPEC+ holds 2026 group quotas steady and agrees a mechanism to reassess members' capacity. Brent averages about $69 for the year.
3–29 Jan 2026
Venezuela changes hands
US forces raid Caracas on 3 January and capture Nicolás Maduro, who is flown to New York to face narco-terrorism charges; Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez is sworn in as interim president on 5 January. The National Assembly rewrites the hydrocarbons law to let foreign companies operate and sell oil even as minority partners of PDVSA, and on 29 January OFAC issues General Licenses 46 and 47 reopening the sector to US companies. Output climbs past 1 mb/d by mid-year.
28 Feb – 2 Mar 2026
The war and the closure
Israel and the United States strike Iran on 28 February; Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is killed. Iran retaliates against US bases, Israel and Gulf energy sites — Qatar's LNG output halts, Aramco's Ras Tanura refinery shuts for a week after intercepted drones start a fire on 2 March. The same day the IRGC declares the Strait of Hormuz closed to US- and Israel-allied shipping. Transits collapse from ~100 ships a day to a trickle.
9–31 Mar 2026
Record stocks, record strikes, record prices
Brent hits $116 on 9 March. The IEA's 32 members agree on 11 March to release 400 million barrels — by far the largest collective action ever, with 172 million from the US SPR. On 13 March US aircraft destroy 90 military sites on Kharg Island but spare the oil terminal. On 18 March Israel strikes Iran's South Pars gas complex (12% of Iranian gas); Iran answers with missiles on Ras Laffan, knocking out 17% of Qatar's LNG capacity for years. Iran turns the strait into a toll booth — up to $2 million a tanker via Larak Island — and its parliament codifies the regime on 30–31 March. Brent closes March at $118.35; Slovenia becomes the first EU country to ration fuel.
7–21 Apr 2026
$144 Dated Brent, a ceasefire and a blockade
Physical Dated Brent is assessed at $144.42 on 7 April — the highest since Platts began publishing it in 1987. On 8 April Pakistan announces a two-week US–Iran pause and hosts talks in Islamabad; on 13 April the US Navy imposes a blockade on Iranian ports that cuts Iran's exports from ~1.8 mb/d to under 300,000 b/d within weeks. Kuwait exports no crude at all for the month; Iraq ships 10 million barrels instead of 93. President Trump extends the ceasefire indefinitely on 21 April.
17 Jun – 2 Jul 2026
The memorandum
A 14-point US–Iran memorandum of understanding, brokered by Pakistan, reopens the strait toll-free for a 60-day negotiating window. Traffic recovers to ~28 ships a day — still a third of normal — and 14 trapped LNG cargoes sail. Brent slides to $69 on 2 July; Urals swings back from a premium to a discount as Asian refiners relax. Russian seaborne crude exports hit a post-invasion record of 4.13 mb/d.
6–27 Jul 2026
Collapse, and a second blockade
Projectiles hit the Qatari LNG carrier Al Rekayyat, the Saudi supertanker Wedyan and a Liberian-flagged tanker on 6–7 July; Trump declares the truce over on 8 July and the naval blockade resumes on 14 July. Drones strike tankers at the CPC terminal in Novorossiysk on 19 July, halting Kazakhstan's main export route. On 20 July the Houthis declare a naval blockade of Saudi Arabia, targeting the very Red Sea route Aramco relies on; Brent reaches $105 on 23 July; the Jizan refinery — 6–8% of Europe's diesel imports since April — is hit on 24 July and shut on the 27th. Russia bans diesel exports for the rest of the month.
Aug – 3 Sep 2026
Stalemate at sea, records on land
Hormuz traffic averages five ships a day; Gulf crude exports run at ~9 mb/d against 17 before the war. Saudi Arabia nonetheless reports ~11 mb/d of production for August — its highest since April 2020 — as Petroline runs flat out; US diesel cracks hit a record $102 a barrel on 17 August and Asian LNG a four-year high on the 28th. The five Western majors book ~$47 billion of quarterly profit. US strikes hit IRGC launchers on Larak Island on 30 August and further targets on 1 September; Qatar and Pakistan shuttle proposals for an Omani-supervised corridor. OPEC+ completes its 1.65 mb/d unwinding with a September hike it can barely deliver. Brent: ~$89.5 on 2 September.
Sources: House of Commons Library briefings (US–Iran ceasefire and nuclear talks; the capture of Maduro); Wikipedia timelines of the 2026 Iran war (cross-checked against Al Jazeera, CNBC, Bloomberg, Reuters and IEA/EIA releases); IEA collective-action notices (11 March 2026 and updates); EIA STEO August 2026; Platts/Bloomberg (Dated Brent record); OPEC press releases (1 March and 2 August 2026); OFAC General Licenses 46/47; CREA and KSE Institute Russian oil trackers; Foreign Policy and Kurdistan24 (Hormuz tolls).
Trade & prices
A price for every route
Benchmark oil doubled and halved inside four months; physical crude in the Atlantic Basin set records while sanctioned Russian barrels swung from discount to premium and back; and the real shortage showed up not in crude but in diesel and jet fuel, where Gulf refineries had been the world's swing supplier. Gas told the same story three times over, at three different prices.
Brent, year by year
Annual-average spot price, $/bbl (2026 = EIA August forecast)
Source: EIA (Brent Europe spot annual averages; 2026 forecast $87, 2027 $69). The 2026 bar hides the range: $61 in January, $116 on 9 March, a $118 close on 31 March, $69 on 2 July, $105 on 23 July. EIA's September 2025 outlook had expected $51 for 2026.
Who bought Russia's fossil fuels, July 2026
Export value by buyer, € billion (total ≈ €21 billion, or €683 million a day)
Source: Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), monthly analysis for July 2026. China took 43% (70% of it crude); India a record share, 87% of it crude; the EU still bought €1.5 billion — 38% pipeline gas, 36% LNG. Crude earned Russia €392 million a day, products €116 million, pipeline gas €71 million, LNG €38 million, coal €66 million.
Four prices, one crisis
Where each benchmark stood at its 2026 extreme
The physical record
Dated Brent — the price of real North Sea cargoes, not futures — reached $144.42 on 7 April, the highest since Platts began the assessment in 1987 and just below the 2008 futures peak of $146.08. Futures never got there: the ICE front month topped out near $121 on 30 April as traders priced a truce.
The capped barrel
Urals traded at $60.22 in July, a 26% ($21) discount to Brent, after briefly commanding a $7–8 premium in April–May when Asian refiners scrambled for anything not stuck behind Hormuz. The G7/EU cap has been frozen at $44.10 since February's switch to a dynamic formula — and 53% of Russian seaborne crude sails on sanctioned shadow tankers regardless.
The distillate squeeze
The US Gulf Coast diesel crack — refining margin over crude — hit a record $102 a barrel on 17 August; Northwest Europe's gasoil crack neared $95. Some 700,000 b/d of Gulf product exports vanished, Jizan's 400 kb/d refinery shut after Houthi strikes and Russia banned diesel exports for most of July. Goldman Sachs doubled its 2027 diesel-margin forecasts to $63 (US) and $49 (EU).
The gas spread
Asian spot LNG (JKM) reached $23.39/MMBtu on 28 August, TTF traded above €70/MWh (about $24), and Henry Hub was forecast at $2.87 for the quarter. The same molecule cost eight times more in Tokyo than in Louisiana — the widest transatlantic gas arbitrage since 2022, and the reason every US export train that can run is running.
Sources: Bloomberg / S&P Global Platts (Dated Brent); Investing.com and EIA (futures highs, STEO price path); CREA July 2026 (Urals, price cap, shadow fleet share); RBN Energy, AGBI and Reuters (diesel cracks, Jizan, Russian diesel ban); Global LNG Hub, LNG Insights and Trading Economics (JKM, TTF); EIA STEO August 2026 (Henry Hub).
Demand destruction, by the numbers
What $100 oil and rationed gas did to consumption
The IEA now expects world oil demand to fall by 1.6 mb/d in 2026 — the first non-pandemic contraction since 2009 — with the drop peaking at 4.9 mb/d year on year in the second quarter, easing to 2.8 mb/d in the third and returning to growth in the fourth before a 2.4 mb/d rebound in 2027. Supply fell harder: 4.3 mb/d for the year to ~102 mb/d, with 8.3 mb/d of Gulf output still shut in during July and observed inventories plunging 69 million barrels that month alone. China's crude imports dropped 32% quarter on quarter to 8.1 mb/d in 2Q26, below 8 mb/d for the first time since 2016; Spirit Airlines ceased operations on 2 May citing fuel costs; the IMF trimmed 2026 global growth to 3%.
−1.6 mb/dIEA's forecast change in world oil demand for 2026 (Oil Market Report, August 2026) — EIA, on a broader liquids basis, sees consumption at 102.7 mb/d against 104.0 mb/d in 2025.
Sources: IEA Oil Market Report, August 2026 (via Argus and OGJ); EIA STEO August 2026; Energies Media / customs data (China imports); Wikipedia "2026 Iran war fuel crisis" compilation (airline and rationing events, cross-checked); IMF World Economic Outlook update, July 2026.
Sanctions & the shadow fleet
Barrels that officially don't exist
Roughly a fifth of the world's oil now moves under some form of sanction, blockade or price cap — Russian, Iranian, Venezuelan — on tankers that switch off their transponders, swap cargoes at sea and insure themselves in Dubai and Mumbai. The 2026 war turned this grey market into the market: when Gulf barrels stopped, sanctioned barrels filled the gap, and enforcing the rules became a choice between principle and price.
🇷🇺Russia: the windfall and the drones
Rosneft and Lukoil — directly sanctioned by the US since 22 October 2025 — regained control of 57% of exports by May 2026 through special-purpose vehicles (KSE). Higher prices lifted export revenue to €683 million a day in July; Moscow dropped planned budget cuts in March. But Ukrainian strikes cut Russian output for six straight months to June, idled Tuapse for two months and cut CPC loadings 23%, and the discount reopened to $21 by July.
🛳The shadow fleet
KSE counted 192 shadow tankers carrying Russian crude and products in April 2026, 92% of them older than 15 years. In July, 53% of Russia's seaborne crude sailed on sanctioned vessels and only 34% on G7-linked tankers — though for products the G7 share was 72%. A shadow-fleet shortage during the Hormuz scramble pushed Russia back toward Western shipping, exactly what the price cap was designed to police.
🇮🇷Iran: blockaded, not bombed
Kharg Island handles ~90–94% of Iran's crude exports; US strikes on 13 March deliberately spared its oil infrastructure. The naval blockade from 13 April did the damage instead: exports fell from 1.84 mb/d in March to under 300,000 b/d in May and 251,000 b/d in August, storage neared tank-tops, and Washington sanctioned Hengli's Dalian refinery and four other Chinese "teapots" that had been taking Iranian crude via Malaysian blends. Al Jazeera put the blockade's cost at nearly $6 billion by early June.
🇻🇪Venezuela: sanctions in reverse
Three weeks after Maduro's capture, OFAC's General License 46 let established US companies lift, refine, ship and sell Venezuelan oil, and GL 47 restored diluent exports. Chevron raised its stake in its PDVSA joint venture to 49% in April and on 2 September pledged $7 billion to double output by 2031, including the Ayacucho 8 heavy-oil block; Shell is close behind. Production reached 1.12 mb/d in July — up 18% on 2025, still half of a decade ago.
🇰🇿Kazakhstan: collateral damage
The CPC pipeline carries more than 80% of Kazakhstan's exports — over 1% of world supply — to Novorossiysk on Russia's Black Sea coast. Attacks on the terminal began in November 2025 and escalated in July 2026, when four drone strikes in four days hit tankers loading Kazakh crude; loadings were suspended and Tengiz had to cut output. Astana protested, Washington warned Kyiv off Kazakh-linked shipping, and Chevron and ExxonMobil watched their biggest Central Asian asset stall.
⚖️The cap that froze
The EU and UK switched the Russian crude price cap to a dynamic formula in February 2026 — at $44.10 it has not moved since, because the formula was designed for falling prices, not a war premium. Enforcement is fraying at both ends: Urals sold above the cap for most of the year, and the US granted a wartime waiver on Russian oil sanctions in the spring that outlasted the emergency it was meant for (The National).
Sources: Kyiv School of Economics Russian Oil Tracker (May and June 2026); CREA monthly analyses (January–July 2026); US Treasury/OFAC (Rosneft-Lukoil designations, GL 46/47, teapot designations); Kpler (Kharg Island explainer); Al Jazeera (blockade revenue loss, Iranian storage); CNN Business and Benzinga (Chevron Venezuela); Times of Central Asia, Euronews and Bloomberg (CPC attacks); The National (US waiver).
OPEC+
A cartel that can't deliver its own quota
OPEC+ spent 2025 arguing about how fast to return 1.65 million barrels a day of voluntary cuts to an oversupplied market. It finished the job in September 2026 — into a market where its own core members physically cannot load the barrels they are now permitted to sell. Quota politics have been replaced by pipeline capacity.
📜The unwinding, completed
Eight countries — Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Algeria and Oman — resumed the rollback of their April 2023 cuts on 1 March 2026 with a 206,000 b/d step, added 188,000 b/d for August and a final ~188,000 b/d for September, closing out the 1.65 mb/d layer entirely. Group-wide 2026 quotas had already been frozen in November 2025, alongside a new mechanism to assess each member's real capacity.
🇸🇦Saudi Arabia: 7.3 then 11
The kingdom pumped just 7.34 mb/d in June against an implied target near 10.29 mb/d — a 2.95 mb/d gap dictated by what Petroline and Yanbu could ship. By August it reported "just over 11 mb/d", its highest since the April 2020 price war, as bypass logistics matured and Bab el-Mandeb flows rose to 8.1 mb/d. Aramco earned $33.4 billion in the second quarter, 33% more than a year earlier, on realised prices near $108.
📉OPEC output: the trough and the climb
EIA has OPEC crude production averaging 24.0 mb/d in 2026 against 29.3 mb/d in 2025, recovering to 29.7 in 2027. Bloomberg's survey put August OPEC output at 28.55 mb/d, up 400,000 b/d on July, as Saudi and Emirati barrels returned; Iraq, Kuwait, Iran and Qatar remained the missing pieces. Non-OPEC supply, meanwhile, is flat at 76.8 mb/d this year and jumps to 80.1 in 2027.
🇷🇺Russia inside the tent
Russia is a co-leader of OPEC+ and, for once, its most reliable supplier: seaborne crude exports hit a post-invasion record of 4.13 mb/d in late June even as drone strikes cut production. The alliance's other winners are the ones outside the Gulf — Kazakhstan until the CPC attacks, Algeria and Oman — and, outside OPEC+, the Americas: EIA sees 1.4 mb/d of growth from the US, Brazil, Guyana, Canada and Argentina in 2026.
24.0 mb/dEIA's estimate of OPEC crude production in 2026, down 5.3 mb/d from 2025 — the deepest one-year fall in the cartel's history, caused not by a decision in Vienna but by a closed strait (STEO, August 2026).
Sources: OPEC press releases (30 November 2025; 1 March 2026; 5 July 2026; 2 August 2026); Bloomberg (Saudi output reports to OPEC; August survey); CNBC and Energy Connects (quota steps); EIA STEO August 2026; Aramco second-quarter 2026 results; IEA Oil Market Report August 2026.
Power
Oil as a weapon, again
The 2026 crisis is the first time since 1973 that oil has been used as a weapon by all sides at once: Iran tolls the strait, the United States blockades Iran's ports, the Houthis blockade Saudi Arabia's Red Sea coast, Ukraine strikes Russian and Kazakh terminals, and importers reach for their strategic reserves. The map of who depends on whom is being redrawn in real time.
🚧The toll booth
Since mid-March the IRGC has routed ships out of the international lane into a corridor between Qeshm and Larak islands, charging $0.50–1 a barrel — about $2 million for a loaded VLCC, sometimes in yuan or crypto — under a five-tier nationality ranking; US- and Israel-linked vessels are refused outright. Iran's parliament wrote it into law as the "Strait of Hormuz Management Plan" on 30–31 March. The June MoU suspended the fees; their return is the core of the current dispute.
🛢The stockpile weapon
IEA members made 400 million barrels available on 11 March — more than double the 2022 release — and had put ~290 million on the market by mid-year, leaving about a billion barrels in government reserves. The US contributed 172 million barrels from its SPR (announced 13 March); Japan released 80 million, or 15 days of demand. EIA assumes no further US releases — the reserve is now the thinnest it has been since the 1980s.
🇨🇳China turns inland
China's seaborne imports transiting Hormuz fell from 51% of the total in 2025 to ~44% as it leaned on Russia (≈1.8 mb/d by sea, plus pipelines) and drew down commercial stocks; total crude imports dropped to 8.1 mb/d in the second quarter. Beijing's response is structural — more overland pipelines from Russia and Central Asia, more coal, faster electrification — and its sanctioned "teapot" refiners are the pressure point Washington has chosen to squeeze.
🇮🇳India buys everything
India's refiners, once Hormuz-dependent, took a record 2.8 mb/d of Russian crude in July — a third of imports — while a February US–India trade deal was billed by Washington as a promise to switch to American and Venezuelan barrels that New Delhi never confirmed. Its state refiners are also locking in one-year tenders for Iraqi and Omani grades delivered outside the strait.
🌍Africa's Atlantic advantage
Barrels that never see a chokepoint suddenly carry a security premium: Nigeria (1.51 mb/d), Angola (1.1 mb/d), Libya and Algeria ship straight into the Atlantic and Mediterranean. Nigeria's 650,000 b/d Dangote refinery is running flat out, made the country a net petrol exporter for the first time in March and sent its first gasoline cargo to Mozambique as East African buyers diversify away from the Gulf.
🇪🇺Europe's exposed flank
Europe's crude exposure was modest — most Hormuz oil went to Asia — but its diesel and LNG exposure was not: Jizan supplied 6–8% of EU and UK diesel imports before it was hit, Qatar was a top-three LNG supplier, and storage entered the summer 15 bcm below the five-year average. Slovenia rationed fuel from 23 March; refiners such as Repsol pushed jet-fuel yields 15–20% above normal to avoid an aviation shortage.
Sources: Foreign Policy, Gulf Business and Kurdistan24 (Hormuz tolls); IEA collective-action notices and Energy Connects (stocks); Vortexa and China Briefing (China's imports); The Print, CFR and IndexBox (India); African Energy Week, CNBC Africa and OilPrice (Africa, Dangote); AGBI, Energy Aspects and Discovery Alert (Europe's distillate and gas exposure).
Capital flows
Where the energy money is going
Before the war, the IEA's investment tally showed upstream oil spending falling for a third straight year while gas investment climbed to a ten-year high of $330 billion. The crisis has not reversed that; it has sharpened it. Money is going to LNG, to Hormuz bypass pipelines, to the Americas and Africa, and to the majors' shareholders. Presented as observation, not investment advice.
🚢The LNG wave
About 300 bcm/yr of new liquefaction is due by 2030, 70% of it in the US and Qatar (IEA). In 2026 alone: Golden Pass Train 1 shipped its first cargo on 22 April with Train 2 due this half; Cheniere's Corpus Christi Stage 3 reached substantial completion on 28 August, lifting the site toward 56 Mt/yr; Plaquemines completes Phase 1 this quarter; Commonwealth LNG took a $12.5 billion FID on 13 June; LNG Canada is ramping to 1.84 Bcf/d. Port Arthur, Rio Grande and Golden Pass Train 3 follow in 2027.
🏗The bypass boom
The Gulf is spending its way out of Hormuz: Abu Dhabi's West-East pipeline is 50% built and fast-tracked for early 2027, Iraq is funding a tripling of Kirkuk–Ceyhan throughput to 770,000 b/d, and Kpler tracks new bypass lines that could be online within one to two years. Trans Mountain, meanwhile, is running full for the first time and has launched an open season for 90,000 b/d more by 2027 and 210,000 by 2028.
🌎The Americas' decade
Brazil hit a record 4.24 mb/d of oil in March 2026 (5.53 mboe/d with gas) on Santos pre-salt; Guyana produces ~870 kb/d with a fifth FPSO due this quarter and 1.7 mb/d of capacity planned; Argentina's Vaca Muerta lifted a record 882 kb/d in April and crude is now the country's top export; Venezuela reopens with Chevron's $7 billion plan. EIA credits the Americas with all 1.4 mb/d of 2026 non-Gulf supply growth.
💰The windfall quarter
Second-quarter 2026 results read like 2022: ExxonMobil $14.5 billion, Chevron $12.1 billion (refining up 500%), Shell $9.8 billion adjusted (its best in four years, with ~20% of production disrupted), TotalEnergies $6.0 billion, BP $5.7 billion underlying, Equinor $4.8 billion net (+267%) — roughly $47 billion for the five Western majors, and $33.4 billion for Aramco alone.
🤝Deals
Shell closed its $16.5 billion purchase of ARC Resources, doubling down on Canadian gas and LNG Canada; speculation about a bid for BP — by Shell, ADNOC's XRG, Chevron or ExxonMobil — has hung over London since 2025; XRG bought into three Vaca Muerta blocks tied to Argentina LNG; Chevron and Shell are signing the first big Venezuelan production deals since Maduro's capture. Energy Transfer suspended Lake Charles LNG in December 2025 — a reminder that not every train gets built.
⚠️The risks
Every one is a headline: a Hormuz settlement that returns 5–8 mb/d within months (EIA sees Brent at $69 in 2027 and most shut-ins restored by early 2027); demand that fell 1.6 mb/d and may not fully return; Houthi and Ukrainian drones that make "static, high-value" pipelines and terminals the next target; a price cap and sanctions regime that bends under $100 oil; and an LNG glut that arrives in 2028 anyway, Ras Laffan or not.
This section describes where capital is flowing, based on public data. It is not financial advice.
Sources: IEA World Energy Investment 2026; EIA Today in Energy (Golden Pass, Plaquemines, US LNG capacity); Cheniere, Venture Global, Commonwealth LNG, Golden Pass and QatarEnergy disclosures; Kpler and CNBC (bypass pipelines); Trans Mountain; ANP/Agência Brasil, ExxonMobil Guyana, Argentine energy secretariat via OilPrice and Buenos Aires Times; company second-quarter 2026 results; OilPrice and CSP Daily News (Shell–ARC, BP speculation); Energy Transfer.
Company tracker
The companies that move oil and gas
State producers that own the reserves, the majors and independents that develop them, the LNG and pipeline operators that move them, and the traders and refiners that turn a cargo into a margin. One company kept 7 million barrels a day flowing through a single pipeline; another lost a fifth of its output and posted its best quarter in four years. Filter by segment or search.
Company
Segment
Key assets
Status & recent signals
Company status reflects public disclosures as of early September 2026. This is an observational tracker, not investment advice.
Sources: company disclosures & filings (second-quarter and half-year 2026 results); EIA; IEA; OPEC; CREA; KSE Institute; Kpler; trade press (Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, Argus, S&P Global, Energy Intelligence, Natural Gas Intelligence, OilPrice, Al Jazeera).
Data & methodology
Open data sources
EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook — monthly forecasts of world liquids supply and demand, Brent and Henry Hub prices, US production and LNG exports; the August 2026 edition's Table 1 of Hormuz-related shut-ins by country is the basis of the shut-in ledger above. Also World Oil Transit Chokepoints (updated 3 March 2026) and International Energy Statistics for production by country.
Energy Institute Statistical Review of World Energy 2026 — 2025 oil consumption (103 mb/d, +1.3%), gas production and consumption by country, LNG trade; the last edition with proved gas reserves by country is the 2021 review (end-2020 data), used for the gas-reserves note.
Tanker tracking & sanctions analysis — Kpler and Vortexa (Hormuz transits, Gulf exports, Fujairah and Yanbu loadings, China's import mix); CREA monthly analyses of Russian fossil-fuel exports (revenues, buyers, shadow-fleet share, Urals price); KSE Institute Russian Oil Tracker; Gibson Shipbrokers (port-call data via Al Jazeera).
Prices — EIA (Brent and WTI spot, Henry Hub); ICE and CME (futures); S&P Global Platts via Bloomberg (Dated Brent record, 7 April 2026); Platts JKM and ICE TTF via Global LNG Hub, LNG Insights and Trading Economics; RBN Energy, Argus and AGBI (diesel and jet crack spreads).
Policy & sanctions — US Treasury OFAC (Rosneft/Lukoil designations, Venezuela General Licenses 46 and 47, Chinese refinery designations); EU Council (Russian gas phase-out regulation, price-cap mechanism); IEA collective-action decisions; House of Commons Library briefings on the US–Iran ceasefire and the capture of Maduro; Congressional Research Service (Strait of Hormuz).
Companies & projects — Aramco, ADNOC, QatarEnergy, ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, BP, TotalEnergies, Equinor, Petrobras, Cheniere, Venture Global, Golden Pass, Commonwealth LNG, Woodside, Trans Mountain and Dangote disclosures; EIA Today in Energy (US LNG terminals); Natural Gas Intelligence, RBN Energy and LNG Industry (project status).
Notes — field, terminal and chokepoint coordinates are approximate; circle sizes indicate relative scale, not measured throughput. Oil volumes are barrels per day (mb/d = million, kb/d = thousand) and mix crude-only and total-liquids bases as labelled; gas volumes are billion cubic metres (bcm) or billion cubic feet per day (Bcf/d; 1 Bcf/d ≈ 7.5 Mt/yr of LNG). Shut-in figures are EIA estimates and are revised monthly. Events of the 2026 Iran war are cited to the outlets that reported them and may be revised as official accounts emerge. Last data refresh: 3 September 2026. Header photo: pumpjack at sunset — Zbynek Burival via Unsplash, Unsplash License.
FAQ
Common questions
Why does the Strait of Hormuz matter so much for oil and gas?
Because roughly one in five barrels the world burns passed through it. In the first half of 2025 about 20.9 million barrels a day of crude and products transited the strait (EIA) — around 15 mb/d of crude and condensate plus 5.5 mb/d of refined products — along with about a fifth of the world's LNG, almost all of it from Qatar, and nearly 30% of seaborne LPG. Some 84% of that oil went to Asia. When Iran shut the strait to normal commercial traffic on 2 March 2026, transits fell from about 100 ships a day to a handful, EIA estimates flows dropped to 4.9 mb/d in the second quarter, and the IEA called it the largest supply disruption in the history of the oil market.
Which country produces the most oil?
The United States, by a wide margin: about 13.6 million barrels a day of crude oil and condensate in 2025 — a record for any country — with EIA forecasting 13.8 mb/d in 2026 and 14.2 mb/d in 2027. Russia (about 9.9 mb/d) and Saudi Arabia (about 9.5 mb/d) follow; together the top three pump nearly 40% of the world's crude and the top five about half. In 2026 the ranking is being scrambled by the Hormuz closure: Saudi output fell to 7.3 mb/d in June against a quota near 10.3 mb/d, then rebounded to about 11 mb/d in August as the East-West pipeline ran at a record 7 mb/d, while Kuwait exported no crude at all in April.
Who holds the world's oil and gas reserves?
Proved crude reserves are concentrated in a handful of states: OPEC's 2026 Annual Statistical Bulletin puts Venezuela first at about 304 billion barrels, Saudi Arabia at 267 billion and Iran at 209 billion, followed by Canada (about 163 billion including oil sands), Iraq, the UAE, Kuwait and Russia. The world total is roughly 1.6–1.7 trillion barrels — about 47 years of consumption at 2025 rates. Gas is even more concentrated: Russia, Iran and Qatar hold about half of the world's proved reserves, and the Iran–Qatar field they share (South Pars/North Dome) is the largest gas reservoir on Earth — which is why the March 2026 strikes on both sides of it shook the LNG market.
What happened to oil prices in 2026?
They went vertical. Brent opened the year near $61, touched $116 on 9 March within a week of the Hormuz closure and settled above $118 at the end of March. On 7 April physical Dated Brent was assessed at $144.42 a barrel — the highest since the benchmark began in 1987, a whisker below the 2008 futures record. The June truce sent Brent down to $69 on 2 July; renewed tanker attacks and the Houthi blockade of Saudi Arabia pushed it back to $105 on 23 July; by 2 September it traded near $89.5, about 24% above pre-war. EIA's August outlook expects Brent to average $87 in 2026 and fall to $69 in 2027 as shut-in Gulf production returns — with about 0.6 mb/d still disrupted through the end of 2027.
Where does the world's LNG come from, and why is it so tight in 2026?
Three exporters — the United States, Qatar and Australia — supplied 63% of a record 437 million tonnes of LNG traded in 2025, and the US alone shipped 111 million tonnes, the first country ever above 100. Qatar was about a fifth of world supply and every one of its cargoes sails through Hormuz. Iranian missiles hit Ras Laffan on 18–19 March 2026, knocking out about 17% of Qatar's export capacity (12.8 million tonnes a year) for an estimated three to five years, and QatarEnergy has declared force majeure on contracts running into November 2026. The result: Asian spot LNG hit $23.39 per MMBtu on 28 August, a four-year high, European TTF gas climbed back above €70/MWh, EU storage sat 15 bcm below the five-year average in late June, and Pakistan, Bangladesh and India saw cargoes cancelled — while Henry Hub in the US stayed below $3.
Can pipelines bypass the Strait of Hormuz?
Partly. Saudi Arabia's East-West Petroline can carry 7 million barrels a day from the Gulf fields to Yanbu on the Red Sea, and Aramco ran it at that all-time record in 2026 — Yanbu crude exports hit about 5 mb/d in March. The UAE's ADCOP line moves up to 1.5 mb/d to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, and Iraq's Kirkuk–Ceyhan line to Türkiye has a nominal 1.6 mb/d but carried only 200,000–250,000 b/d, with plans to reach 770,000. That is roughly 9 mb/d of bypass against 20 mb/d of normal Hormuz flow — and the Red Sea route itself became a target when the Houthis declared a naval blockade on Saudi Arabia on 20 July 2026 and struck the Jizan refinery. Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Iran have no bypass at all. Abu Dhabi is fast-tracking a new West-East pipeline for early 2027.
Is Russia winning or losing from the 2026 oil shock?
Both. Higher prices and Asian refiners scrambling for non-Gulf barrels lifted Russian fossil-fuel export revenue to about €683 million a day in July 2026 (CREA); Urals crude briefly sold at a $7–8 premium to Brent in April–May, seaborne crude exports hit a post-invasion record of 4.13 mb/d in June, and India bought a record 2.8 mb/d of Russian crude in July. But the discount had reopened to about $21 a barrel by July, the G7 price cap sits at $44.10, Rosneft and Lukoil have been under direct US sanctions since October 2025, about 53% of seaborne crude moves on sanctioned shadow tankers, and Ukrainian drone strikes have cut Russian output for months and idled the Tuapse and CPC terminals for weeks at a time.
Need a deep-dive report on oil and gas?
That's exactly what we do. We produce commissioned deep-dive reports for energy companies, traders, insurers, geopolitics researchers and think tanks, covering angles such as chokepoint and flow analysis, Gulf shut-in and bypass scenarios, sanctions and shadow-fleet tracking, LNG contract and capacity mapping, country and basin deep-dives and the exposure of specific companies or importing economies. Every report is source-cited — charts, maps and citations included — and built on the same open, verified data behind this dashboard. Email hello@mineral.watch with a short note on what you need and we'll come back with a scoped proposal.
Custom research
Need an ad hoc data-driven energy report?
We produce bespoke, source-cited research for energy companies, traders, insurers, geopolitics researchers and think tanks — chokepoint and flow analysis, shut-in and bypass scenarios, sanctions and shadow-fleet tracking, LNG contract and capacity mapping, country and basin deep-dives — built on the same open data behind this dashboard and our strategic-minerals work.
mineral.watch is an independent data hub, and it grows with the people who use it. Introduce yourself and we'll let you know when the oil and gas figures on this dashboard are updated and when new dashboards, datasets and research go live — no noise, just what's new.
Telling us your sector and organisation helps too: it shows us who relies on this data — energy companies, traders, analysts, policymakers, journalists, researchers — and shapes what we build next, from new datasets to custom research.
Prefer to talk directly? Corrections, data tips and collaboration ideas are always welcome at hello@mineral.watch.
