Interactive model stress-tests a Strait of Hormuz closure on real crude-trade data

A Show HN project called the SCN Global Flow Monitor lets users simulate what happens to global crude oil markets if the Strait of Hormuz — the chokepoint through which a large share of seaborne oil passes — were shut down. Rather than forecasting, it runs a stress test over a network built from UN Comtrade 2025 reported trade flows, so sanctioned and unreported shipments fall outside its scope. The interface surfaces live outputs as the shock propagates: the number of destabilized nodes, a systemic supply deficit measured in millions of barrels per week, throughput relative to the pre-shock baseline, and an endogenous clearing price starting from $75.

Under the hood, the authors describe a supply-chain-network approach that combines fluid-stochastic network clearing, Skorokhod inventory dynamics, and pricing that responds to strategic rebalancing of trade as countries reroute around the disruption. Nodes are classed by exposure — collapsed (over 60% loss), degraded (10–60%), insulated, or served by overland and pipeline routes. Notably, ‘capacity-retained’ scenarios fold in bypass infrastructure such as the East–West and Habshan–Fujairah pipelines that can move Gulf crude around Hormuz. The model deliberately omits any rationing policy: emergency importer stockpiles simply drain mechanically until depleted, while exporter buffers are treated as elastic supply.

The project pairs the interactive tool with a companion paper (arXiv:2607.17491), positioning it as a reproducible way to reason about how a single geopolitical chokepoint failure cascades through the world’s energy trade. The value is less in any single headline number than in making the network structure — who collapses, who is insulated, and how much pipeline bypass capacity actually cushions the blow — legible and tunable. The authors are careful to frame it as an analytical stress test rather than a prediction of any real event.