Many European countries like Italy, Greece, Spain, Poland and Belgium rely on the Strait of Hormuz for imports or refining. Experts say the closure of this corridor will not cut off Europe’s oil supply, but will continue to drive up oil prices and disrupt markets.
As military escalation surges in the Middle East, Iran's announcement of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz has sent crude oil and natural gas prices soaring.
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Faced with rising energy costs at home, European leaders are scrambling to avoid a cascading energy crisis, and are especially concerned about mitigating the price shock already being felt in markets.
Many European countries like Italy, Greece, Spain, Poland and Belgium rely on the Strait of Hormuz for imports or refining. Experts say the closure of this corridor will not cut off Europe’s oil supply, but will continue to drive oil prices and disrupt markets.
Lying between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, the Strait is a narrow shipping corridor largely under Iranian control, and serves as one of the world’s most critical energy choke points for oil, accounting for 20% of global production.
Johannes Rauball, a senior crude analyst at the real-time data and market intelligence firm Kpler, estimated Hormuz-related disruptions to last another three to four weeks, keeping Europe exposed to elevated prices and volatility, with crude prices currently carrying a risk premium of around $15 (€13) per barrel.
"(Prices) will begin stabilizing once credible prospects of US–Iran talks emerge, or if flows via the Hormuz restart. We expect most of the risk premium to fall when negotiations look tangible, and largely disappear once a structured agreement is reached," Rauball told Euronews.
The European Commission is convening technical experts on Wednesday to address the new energy crisis, which severely complicates the bloc's ongoing battle to cut high electricity prices in a bid to re-industrialise the EU27's competitiveness.
While the bloc's oil imports are diversified, with Norway (14.6%), the United States (14.5%), and Kazakhstan (12.2%) ranking as the top three major suppliers, several EU countries do import oil from Gulf producers.
Saudi Arabia accounted for 6.8% of the bloc's total imports in the first 9 months of 2025, according to EU data, with Spain, Germany, France, and the Netherlands the bloc's top importers.
Iraq has already recorded oil production shut-ins as a result of the military strikes, Rauball said. Other Gulf states — including the UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar — have roughly 10–20 days of flexibility before shut-ins are required, assuming normal production rates.
Alternative oil routes
Baird Langenbrunner, Research Analyst at the Global Energy Monitor, said there are two viable oil pipelines that could serve as an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.
The first option is the Saudi East-West crude oil pipeline, which has a capacity of 5 million barrels per day. It runs east-to-west across Saudi Arabia from the Abqaiq processing center to Yanbu on the Red Sea.
"Yanbu wasn’t designed to be Saudi Arabia’s main export hub, so its infrastructure and tanker-loading capacity will likely constrain actual throughput," Langenbrunner told Euronews.
Parallel pipeline infrastructure along this route could be temporarily converted to carry extra oil, Langenbrunner added, increasing the total takeaway to 7 million barrels per day.
"That would compete with carrying other important liquids to Yanbu," Langenbrunner added.
The second alternative is the Habshan–Fujairah oil pipeline in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which could transport crude oil to the Fujairah terminal on the Gulf of Oman, but Langenbrunner pointed out it has a much lower daily capacity of 1.8 million barrels.
"The UAE already uses it as a routine export route, because it bypasses insurance and security costs of transiting the strait, and there’s not much spare capacity to use," the energy analyst added.
The recently built Goreh-Jask Crude Oil Pipeline in Iran would, in theory, be capable of bypassing the Strait, he explained, but not without complications.
"This pipeline sits in Iran, which was already under heavy US sanctions and whose infrastructure is under direct military attack. In addition, its confirmed capacity is around 300,000 barrels per day, quite small compared to what the strait handles each day," Langenbrunner said.
Ultimately, only a small fraction of what normally flows through the Strait could transit alternative pipeline routes, compared to the 20 million barrels per day that transit that corridor.
All the while, shipping through the Strait of Hormuz between Iran and Oman has ground to a near halt after vessels in the area were hit as Iran retaliated against US and Israeli strikes.
Shipping insurers have announced they are cancelling war risk coverage after the Iranian armed forces, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said the Strait was closed, and tankers are also likely to avoid transiting the Red Sea via the Suez Canal to reach Europe.
"For volumes that can’t go through pipelines and rely on ships, an alternative is to re-route tankers around the Cape of Good Hope to reach Europe, which adds substantial time and cost to transit," Langenbrunner said. "And this only helps oil not already trapped in the Persian Gulf."
North Sea, North Africa and Latin America
North Sea production remains one of Europe’s most secure alternative supply sources.Crude from offshore fields in Norway and the UK can be shipped directly by tanker to European ports.
The US and West Africa also offer viable substitutes, with producers such as Nigeria and Angola shipping crude directly to Europe along Atlantic tanker routes.
North Africa, particularly Algeria and Libya, provides very short-haul Mediterranean supply routes into Southern Europe. These shipments avoid major global chokepoints and benefit from minimal transport distance. But political instability, especially in Libya, poses recurring risks to sustained supply.
Caspian and Central Asian producers such as Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan offer additional diversification. Their crude typically travels by pipeline to Black Sea export terminals before being shipped through the Turkish Straits into the Mediterranean.
Latin American suppliers, notably Brazil and Guyana, can deliver crude to Europe via Atlantic tanker routes that avoid Middle Eastern chokepoints altogether.
Pauline Heinrichs, Lecturer in War Studies at King's College London, said that if Europe wants to take security strategy seriously, it will need to reduce the insecurity from fossil fuel dependency.
“Our security strategy is currently reduced to responding to fossil fuel-induced crises, and I mean that both in terms of fossil fuels themselves, but also the powers that depend on fossil fuels to support their power, including the United States," Heinrichs said.