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Strait of Hormuz Carries One-Third of Global Urea Exports

The Story

The Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, carries more than a third of global urea exports and roughly a quarter of global seaborne oil trade (Source 2 + Source 3 + Source 4). Saudi Arabia and Oman, both Gulf urea producers, rank among the largest exporters of the nitrogen fertilizer in the world (Source 2 + Source 4).

Urea is the most widely used solid fertilizer for staple crops including rice, wheat, and maize, and roughly half of all global food production depends on nitrogen fertilizers like urea and ammonia (Source 4 + Source 5).

Quotes

“We have 30-35 per cent of the crude oil, which is not moving, 20 per cent of natural gas…and between 20 to 30 per cent of other fertilizers that are not moving out.” — Máximo Torero, FAO Chief Economist (Source 1).

“About a third of the world’s basic fertilizers now pass through the Strait of Hormuz.” — Adam Hanieh, Director of SOAS Middle East Institute (Source 4).

Joseph Glauber of the International Food Policy Research Institute described roughly 35 per cent of the world’s nitrogen-based fertilizers as being exported from the Persian Gulf (Source 5 @ 76s, non-verbatim, YouTube auto-caption).

So What

When one strait controls a third of a critical agricultural input, every fertilizer-using country is one shipping disruption away from a yield shock. The Gulf monarchies built this dominance over decades by diversifying down the energy value chain from raw gas into urea and ammonia, turning natural-gas feedstock into a globally-traded chemical with no easy substitutes. Diversifying out of this chokepoint takes years (new plants, new logistics), so the exposure baked into the 2026 crisis was structural before any shot was fired.

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