Amin Nasser warned the oil market will lose 100 million barrels of supply every week the strait remains closed, saying only a fraction of the usual vessels are now able to pass through the waterway daily.
Nasser said the disruption has already cost the market more than 1 billion barrels of supply and that stopgap measures have redirected around 880 million barrels through Aramco’s east‑west pipeline and involved releases from governments’ strategic reserves to steady flows.
The numbers underpin how acute the situation has become: 100 million barrels a week in lost supply, more than 1 billion barrels already out of circulation and global oil inventories depleting rapidly. Those figures explain why commodity prices, though restrained for now by temporary fixes, remain vulnerable if the Strait of Hormuz disruption continues.
The practical effects are visible in shifting trade patterns. African producers including Nigeria, Angola and Algeria are preparing to capitalise on the tighter market. Angola exported 86.18 million barrels of crude in Q1 2026, earning $7.16 billion, even as its export volume was down 9.14% from the previous quarter.
Angola’s March 2026 exports reached 1,152,930 barrels per day, a figure that exceeded the country’s reported production that month of 1,021,633 barrels per day — signalling heavier use of storage, transit and re‑routing to meet contractual commitments. Volza data shows Angola sent crude to 28 buyers globally between July 2024 and June 2025, with the United States, Singapore and China among major importers.
Market share details in the Volza set include PETCO TRADING UK LIMITED holding 41% among key exporters and CHEVRON USA INC holding 17%. The data also shows Indian Oil Corporation accounting for 41% of global imports in that period and buying 2 million barrels of crude for March delivery.
On refining and downstream capacity, Angola is expanding. The Luanda refinery currently has a capacity of 65,000 BPSD and is being enlarged to raise output fourfold to 1.58 million litres per day, a project the government says will reduce reliance on imported refined products by up to 15% annually. The 30,000 BPSD Cabinda Refinery is scheduled to begin operations by Q2 2026, and the planned Lobito Refinery would add 200,000 bpd if completed. At the Angola Oil & Gas 2026 conference, the country is seeking to attract $70 billion in investment and to raise local content participation in the oil sector to 20% by 2027.
Nigeria’s refining gains are already changing regional flows. The Dangote Refinery, with a capacity of 650,000 barrels per day, helped Nigeria become a net exporter of petroleum products by March 2026; the facility was producing 57 million litres of petrol daily by that month. Those shifts mean West African fuels and crude are positioned to fill some of the void left by restricted flows through the strait.
Still, the stopgap measures that have so far restrained price spikes cannot hold the line indefinitely. The crude tanker business faces a crossroads in the coming months if the Strait of Hormuz does not fully reopen: rerouting, longer voyages and heavier use of pipelines and inventories are already visible responses, but they come with costs and capacity limits.
Put bluntly, if the strait remains closed the market will face sustained structural shortfalls. Nasser’s 100 million‑barrel‑per‑week warning is not a hypothetical — it is a pacing number for the speed at which buffers will drain. African production and new refining capacity will blunt some of the impact, but they cannot replace the bulk of flows transiting the strait in the near term; the likely outcome is tighter physical oil markets, rising freight complexity and a sustained test of strategic reserve policies.
