00:00There's a stretch of water just 33 kilometres wide at its narrowest point that could decide
00:04whether India's lights stay on, whether your cooking gas runs out and whether oil hits
00:08a hundred dollars a barrel.
00:10It's called the Strait of Hormuz.
00:12And right now, it's at the centre of one of the most dangerous moments in West Asia in years.
00:18The Strait of Hormuz is the choke point between Iran and Oman, the single passage connecting
00:22the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world's oceans.
00:25One in every five barrels of oil consumed globally passes through here.
00:30Every day, about 15 million barrels.
00:33There are pipelines that bypass it, but even at full capacity, they cover only about 60% of the traffic.
00:38The rest, roughly 9% of global daily demand, has no alternate route.
00:42India is the world's third largest oil consumer.
00:45We import over 88% of what we use.
00:48And roughly half of that, about 2.5 to 2.7 million barrels every day, comes through Hormuz.
00:53Oil from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, all of it through that narrow passage.
00:58But crude oil is only part of the story.
01:0080 to 85% of India's LPG, the gas in your kitchen cylinder,
01:04is imported, mostly from the Gulf, almost entirely through Hormuz.
01:07And unlike oil, we don't have strategic reserves for LPG.
01:11Same situation with LNG.
01:12So if Hormuz closes, the cooking gas crunch hits harder and faster than the petrol price.
01:18In the short term, Indian refiners have about 10 days of crude inventory and a week's worth of fuel stocks.
01:23We can draw on strategic petroleum reserves and look to the spot market.
01:26The bigger play is Russia.
01:28Indian refiners had already pulled back on Russian crude, owing to pressure from US President Donald Trump.
01:33But a significant volume of Russian oil is sitting in floating storage in the Indian Ocean right now.
01:37A ready buffer that India could tap relatively quickly if supply from West Asia gets squeezed.
01:41That's a version from some of the experts I've read in the newspapers today.
01:45But here's the thing though.
01:46Iran has threatened to close Hormuz many times.
01:48It has never actually done it.
01:50Because Iran itself exports oil through the strait.
01:53Shutting it down hurts everyone, including Tehran.
01:56But threat and reality have a way of colliding when conflict escalates.
02:00And that's exactly what makes this moment different.
02:0233 kilometres, 1 in 5 barrels of oil and a region on edge.
02:06That's the strait of Hormuz and that's why it matters to you.
02:09I'm Alisha Vikari.
02:11First things fast.
02:12No.
02:13No.
02:13No.
02:14No.
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