Strait of Hormuz closure disrupts global jet fuel supply, Europe faces shortages

The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Twenty percent of the world’s exported jet fuel is stuck. Europe’s reserves will last six weeks. Prediction markets have already moved: the chance of normal tanker traffic resuming by May 15 sits at 2.2 percent, down from 4 percent a day earlier.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps laid sea mines and readied ballistic missiles after U.S.-Israeli strikes, turning the narrow waterway into a blockade. The disruption is compared in scale to the 1973 Arab oil embargo, yet this time the immediate victim is jet fuel rather than crude. Tanker traffic has collapsed, and the knock-on effect is already visible in European storage forecasts.

Markets are equally skeptical that President Trump will announce the blockade lifted by May 31; that contract trades at 38.5 percent, down from 46 percent. The Bab el-Mandeb Strait, by contrast, is priced at 6.8 percent for effective closure by the same date, underscoring that the Hormuz crisis is distinct and more severe.

Diplomats, military watchers, and shipping trackers are now the only variables left. Any engagement involving Trump and Iranian leadership, or sudden changes reported by international agencies, could shift these probabilities. So far the numbers keep sliding toward prolonged disruption.

The situation is fluid, but the data are not. A 2.2 percent implied probability of normal traffic by mid-May is not a forecast; it is a warning that Europe’s six-week clock is running down with no visible off-ramp.

What happens when those reserves hit zero is the only question still worth pricing.

Original reporting: Crypto Briefing.