You are right to ask the question. The numbers do not add up at first glance.
The United States receives approximately 2.7 percent of its total petroleum consumption via the Strait of Hormuz. The rest comes from domestic shale production, Canada, Mexico and other sources. The US is a net exporter of petroleum. It produces more than it consumes.
The UK imports the majority of its crude from Norway, the United States, and Kazakhstan. Its North Sea fields, though declining, still contribute meaningful domestic supply. Its direct dependence on Gulf crude is limited.
Europe as a whole draws only 12 to 14 percent of its LNG from Qatar through the strait, according to Wikipedia's Strait of Hormuz crisis page. For crude oil, European exposure to direct Hormuz flows is similarly modest compared to Asia.
Asia, by contrast, is acutely exposed. According to the US Energy Information Administration, 84 percent of the crude oil and condensate that passes through the Strait of Hormuz is destined for Asian markets. China receives approximately 37.7 percent of all Hormuz flows. India receives 14.7 percent. South Korea and Japan together account for another 23 percent. The Philippines imports 98 percent of its oil from the Gulf, which is why it was the first country in the world to declare a national energy emergency.
So why is the UK paying more at the pump? Why did US gas prices rise by more than 80 cents a gallon in the weeks after the war began?
The single market problem
Oil is not a local product. It is a globally traded commodity priced in real time against international benchmarks: Brent crude for Europe, Africa and most of the world; WTI for American domestic markets. Every barrel produced anywhere competes on the same global market, and every barrel consumed anywhere draws from that same pool.
When 20 percent of global supply disappears, the remaining 80 percent has to serve the entire world. Countries that previously bought Gulf crude must now compete for crude from outside the Gulf with countries like the UK and US that already buy crude from outside the Gulf. That competition drives up the price of every barrel everywhere.
Dominic Pappalardo, chief investment strategist at Morningstar Wealth, explained it plainly to ABC News:
"The price of oil is determined by global supply dynamics. So, whether the US is an importer or an exporter, or regardless of what comes through the Strait that's shut down, the price of oil is still set by global supply and demand."
This is not a theoretical point. It is how the market operates. When the strait closed in early March 2026, tanker traffic fell from an average of 24 vessels a day to effectively zero. According to energy intelligence provider Kpler, the world is currently running a daily shortfall of approximately 8 million barrels even accounting for emergency releases and alternative routes. The IEA's March 2026 Oil Market Report recorded Brent futures reaching close to $120 a barrel, before easing to around $92 at the time of writing. As of 13 April 2026, WTI is trading at approximately $98 to $103 following Trump's announcement of a naval blockade.
Before the war, oil was trading at around $60 a barrel. That is a rise of between 60 and 75 percent in six weeks.
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But is the rise disproportionate? Are prices artificially inflated?
This is the harder question and the honest answer is: partially, yes.
The physical supply disruption is real. The IEA confirmed the largest emergency stock release in its history, 400 million barrels coordinated on 11 March 2026, to cushion the shock. Gulf countries have cut total production by at least 10 million barrels per day because storage is filling up and they cannot export. Saudi Arabia has diverted flows through its alternative pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. The UAE is routing crude through its pipeline to Fujairah. Together, those bypass routes can carry approximately 3.5 to 5.5 million barrels per day, according to the IEA — leaving a net shortfall of roughly 14.5 to 16.5 million barrels per day if normal transit collapses entirely.
That is a genuine physical crisis. It justifies significant price rises.
But commodity markets do not price physical reality alone. They price fear, speculation and futures contracts that reflect what traders expect to happen next. Adi Imsirovic, a veteran oil trader who lectures at the University of Oxford, told Al Jazeera that the extent of the energy shock has not been fully appreciated, but also that the gap between spot prices and futures prices has widened well beyond what is typical. In normal markets those two figures track each other closely. The current divergence reflects something additional: a fear premium on top of the physical supply premium.
That fear premium is real money. Mizuho Bank noted that war risk insurance alone adds between $5 and $15 per barrel regardless of whether the oil in question ever goes near the strait. Shipping companies rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope add voyage costs and transit times to every cargo. Those costs flow into refined product prices at the pump.
The LSE Business Review described this precisely. Even where European or American dependence on Gulf crude is lower, disruption in Hormuz still affects diesel, freight, aviation fuel and inflation expectations through global pricing. You are paying the fear premium whether you ever used Gulf oil or not.
The UK's specific vulnerability
The UK has an additional exposure that most European countries do not. As Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary warned, the UK is the European country most vulnerable to jet fuel shortages because Kuwait holds a significant share of the UK aviation fuel market. There may be a surplus of jet fuel in the Middle East at present, but it cannot be shipped to Europe while the strait is effectively closed.
Jet fuel in the UK has more than doubled. European airports, including in Italy, have begun rationing refuelling. That is a direct physical consequence, not a speculative one.
What this actually means for your fuel bill
To quantify it: oil was approximately $60 a barrel before the war. It is approximately $98 to $103 today. That is a 63 to 72 percent increase in the raw material cost of petrol and diesel. The proportion of that increase attributable to genuine physical supply disruption, the IEA estimates, would justify a rise to perhaps $95 to $110 per barrel if the disruption persists through Q2 2026, based on Dallas Fed modelling.
Is there a speculative element on top of that? The futures market spread says yes. The size of that speculative element is genuinely contested among economists. What is not contested is that it exists.
The world's oil infrastructure is genuinely stretched. Bypass pipelines cover roughly a third of what the strait normally carries. Emergency stockpiles provide approximately 20 days of coverage at normal demand. If the strait stays closed past the current ceasefire expiry on 22 April, analysts including those at the Dallas Fed project WTI rising to $132 per barrel for a closure lasting two quarters.
The UK is not in crisis mode. The US is not rationing fuel. But you are both paying for Asia's crisis, through the mechanism of a single global market that does not distinguish between where your barrel was pumped or which route it took to reach you.
That is not artificial inflation in any fraudulent sense. It is how commodity markets have always functioned. It is just rarely this visible.
Sources:
- US Energy Information Administration — Strait of Hormuz
- International Energy Agency — Strait of Hormuz
- IEA Oil Market Report — March 2026
- LSE Business Review — Disruption in the Strait of Hormuz
- Al Jazeera — Why oil prices aren't what you think
- ABC News — Why are your gas prices rising if the US barely imports any oil from the Strait of Hormuz
- Wikipedia — Strait of Hormuz crisis 2026
- Visual Capitalist — Oil Trade Through the Strait of Hormuz by Country
- Trading Economics — Crude Oil price
- Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas — What the closure of the Strait of Hormuz means for the global economy