Since early March a previously obscure waterway between Iran and Oman that very few people could name has become the subject of daily reporting around the world after Iran closed it as a response to the attack on Iran by the United States and Israel. The Strait of Hormuz, which remains closed to most ships, is now known around the world as the transit point for 20 percent of the world's oil and high percentages of key materials including fertilizers such as ammonia (23 percent), urea (34 percent) and phosphate (20 percent), helium (30 percent), and sulfur (24 percent), all of which are derived from or are co-products of oil or natural gas except phosphate.
On the other side of the Arabian peninsula, a long-festering conflict between Ansar Allah (which controls part of Yemen) and Saudi Arabia has escalated. Not surprisingly, Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, have resorted to a tactic used previously in the conflict. They have closed the Bab el-Mandeb Strait near their the territory to Saudi vessels.
The strait connects Red Sea shippers with ocean-going routes to Asia. This includes ships coming through the Suez Canal on the northern end of the Red Sea. The Houthis say that commercial shippers not serving Saudi Arabia may continue using the strait, but many have chosen to avoid it as the Houthis attack Saudi ships. In practice this means primarily a prohibition on Saudi oil tankers which carry Saudi Arabia's main export. For now, the Saudi ships are taking a trip around Africa to reach Asia despite the added costs. But the Houthis have shown they can hit Saudi ports on the Red Sea and could escalate to shut down even this traffic.
Human-made problems to navigation are now being joined by climate-induced troubles that are reducing or crippling shipping elsewhere in the world. The Panama Canal relies on sufficient rain to fill artificial lakes that feed water into the canal locks. Once released to the canal, that water is lost to the ocean and must be replenished. But ongoing drought is limiting the number of ships the canal can handle each day. Ships must now wait 10 days to transit the canal unless they enter a special auction and pay a premium to skip the line. (For a more detailed explanation of how the canal uses water and why this competes with domestic water supplies, see my previous coverage of September 2023, "Climate change and the hidden water cost of the Panama Canal.")
In Europe, what is arguably the main water shipping route, the Rhine River, is experiencing its lowest levels since records began in 1880. As heatwave after heatwave continue to hit the continent, drought has starved the river of water. Vessels must now carry less cargo to avoid scraping the bottom of the river and getting stuck. As a result, some freight normally carried on the river is now going by truck and rail. In fact, according to shipping industry sources, the river has now been effectively bisected between an upper and lower region because the Rhine is effectively impassable to barges at Kaub, southeast of Cologne.
It may seem as if our human-induced shipping bottlenecks in the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab el-Mandeb Strait are passing problems. But it's important to note that since the Houthis first curtailed traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb in November 2023, maritime traffic has never recovered even after a cease-fire in May 2025 with the United States which had entered the conflict on the side of the Saudis. Now strait traffic has taken another dive as the Houthis renew their fight with Saudi Arabia.
As for the Iranians, they have rejected negotiations with the United States for now and are believed to be waiting for oil prices to move much higher (thus creating more damage to the U.S. and world economies) before engaging the United States again in hopes of getting most or all of their demands met.
Therefore, expecting traffic through either strait to expand dramatically anytime soon seems overly optimistic.
As for the nature-induced shipping troubles in Panama and Europe, we may be faced with ongoing challenges to shipping there as well except that we have no one to negotiate with in order to solve the problem. Nature is unyielding and silent in the face of our hopes for more rain.
It is no small irony that in Southwest Asia shipping has been curtailed by a conflict which centers around the world's largest deposits of fossil fuels, the very fuels the burning of which are a major cause of climate change and thus contributing to the drought bedeviling Panamanian and European navigation. I wonder if our leaders will ever put the two together.
Kurt Cobb is a freelance writer and communications consultant who writes frequently about energy and environment. His work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Resilience, Common Dreams, Naked Capitalism, Le Monde Diplomatique, Oilprice.com, OilVoice, TalkMarkets, Investing.com, Business Insider and many other places. He is the author of an oil-themed novel entitled Prelude and has a widely followed blog called Resource Insights. He can be contacted at kurtcobb2001@yahoo.com.
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