The Energy Information Administration says the Strait of Hormuz carried 21 million barrels a day of oil and petroleum liquids in 2022, about 21% of global petroleum liquids consumption, which is why even a partial passage rule can matter before anyone can prove a full closure. [1]

That number is why Monday's passage-rule story follows Saturday's warning that oil relief was running ahead of ship passage evidence, because a price move can be useful and still be early when the route at issue moves one fifth of global petroleum-liquids consumption.

The Globe and Mail's AP explainer grounds the scale in commerce by describing Hormuz as a narrow Gulf chokepoint for tankers and noting that conflict risk can change insurance, shipping decisions and energy-market behavior even before a full closure. [2]

The useful reading is arithmetic rather than apocalypse: if that much oil moves through one waterway, then which ships move, under whose warning, with what insurance, and after what inspection becomes part of the energy story rather than a footnote to diplomacy. [1] [2]

X can reduce Hormuz to a single switch, open or shut, but the EIA baseline says the better question is bureaucratic and more important: how much passage, under which rules, with what proof?

-- HENDRIK VAN DER BERG, Brussels