What Happens When the World's Oil Has One Door?

Episode 06  ·  Sea chokepoints; the Strait of Hormuz, 2026  ·  all sources

In early March 2026, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz fell from more than a hundred large ships a day to almost none. This film asks why ships could not simply go around, using the voyages, closures and droughts that show how sea chokepoints work: the shortcuts that trade can route around at a cost, and the narrow exits it cannot.

This is a fully animated film. Every visual was drawn for ColdProvenance; no footage, photographs or recordings are used. Narration is a synthesized voice. The music and sound effects were created for this film. Every factual claim is sourced below. Figures describing 2026 are dated; the situation in the strait was still changing when the film was made.

Sources

• U.S. Energy Information Administration — World Oil Transit Chokepoints (updated March 2026): Hormuz, Malacca, Bab-el-Mandeb, Suez, Turkish and Danish straits; oil flows and shares
• International Energy Agency — Strait of Hormuz oil-security page (2025 flows, share of seaborne oil and of world LNG trade)
• International Energy Agency — IEA Member countries to carry out largest ever oil stock release (11 March 2026): the 400-million-barrel release
• International Energy Agency — How global oil supplies have readjusted to help fill the huge gap left by the Strait of Hormuz shock (22 June 2026): flows through the strait, pipeline bypass capacity
• International Energy Agency — Oil Market Report, September 2026: 2026 demand outlook
• International Energy Agency — The Middle East and Global Energy Markets: "the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market"
• IMF PortWatch — daily chokepoint transit data (AIS-based counts of large ships; data to 20 September 2026): Hormuz, Suez and Bab-el-Mandeb daily transits used for every ship count in the film
• IMF — Red Sea Attacks Disrupt Global Trade (7 March 2024): Suez and Cape of Good Hope trade volumes, detour times
• UNCTAD — Review of Maritime Transport: share of world trade carried by sea
• U.S. EIA, Today in Energy — Strait of Malacca (2017), Bab el-Mandeb (2019), Strait of Hormuz (2023) and Panama Canal drought (2024)
• CNN — Ever Given ship freed in the Suez Canal (29 March 2021); gCaptain / Lloyd's List — The $9.6 billion a day price of a Suez stuck ship (25 March 2021)
• PBS NewsHour / AP — Houthi rebels release crew of Galaxy Leader: the November 2023 seizure; Wikipedia — Hijacking of the Galaxy Leader (context only)
• BIMCO — Suez Canal transits still 60% down 100 days after the last Houthi attack (7 January 2026); Lloyd's List Intelligence — Red Sea Brief: 3 September 2026
• Autoridad del Canal de Panamá — How the Canal manages the fresh water challenge and water-saving basins: lock lift, water used per transit
• CNBC — Inside the Panama Canal's mega-project plan (2025); Engineering News-Record — Panama Canal proposes new reservoir; Encyclopaedia Britannica — Panama Canal
• DTN / Progressive Farmer — Panama Canal Authority adopts new transit restrictions (2 September 2026)
• The Jerusalem Post (Reuters) — IRGC tell ships passage through Strait of Hormuz "not allowed" (28 February – 1 March 2026)
• Al Jazeera (with Reuters) — Maritime insurers cancel war risk cover in Gulf (3 March 2026); Lloyd's Market Association — Safety concerns, not insurance availability, driving reduced vessel traffic in the Strait of Hormuz
• International Maritime Organization — press briefings (March–April 2026); UN News — Stranded seafarers remain trapped as Hormuz shipping stalls (23 July 2026)
• Wikipedia — 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis: timeline dates only (8 April ceasefire, 17 June memorandum), cross-checked against the PortWatch traffic record
• The Conversation — Could the Strait of Malacca be the next global flashpoint? (2026)

Visuals

• All animation, maps, ships, characters, diagrams and charts were created by ColdProvenance for this film. No footage, photographs or archival images appear in this film.
• Coastlines and borders: Natural Earth Public domain (1:110m, 1:50m and 1:10m land). Canals, the Bosporus and lake outlines were drawn on top by hand and are simplified.
• Map ships, shipping lanes and traffic are illustrations of the counts in the sources, not plots of individual vessels. Ships on overview maps are symbols, not drawn to map scale; the Ever Given scene and strait close-ups use true relative sizes.
• The Panama Canal lock is a diagram with exaggerated heights. The oil-price line is a schematic whose end point is the sourced record; the rest of its shape is illustrative.
• Scenes of radio warnings, insurance notices, tankers at anchor and stranded crews are illustrations of events described in the sources above, not depictions of specific ships or people.

Audio

• Narration: synthesized voice.
• Music, ambience and sound effects: created for this film. No stock music, sound libraries or field recordings are used.