About & methods
A free, ad-free map of the world's oil and gas infrastructure: the pipelines, fields, refineries, terminals, shipping routes and chokepoints that move energy, and what is happening to them now.
Video tour
How to use it
- Panels: hide a side panel with the « or » button in its header; a labelled tab stays at the edge of the map to bring it back. On a phone, tap Layers in the top bar, and tap or swipe the handle at the bottom to expand or minimise the feed.
- Layers (left): switch pipelines, fields, refineries, LNG terminals, ports, chokepoints, shipping routes, recent events and pump prices on or off. Click anything on the map for details, geopolitical context and related developments.
- Ringed markers show facilities that are not operating normally: reduced, disrupted, offline, damaged or closed. Each status lists its sources and when it was last checked.
- Latest: a dated, sourced feed of developments, filterable by time and category. The full archive is on the events page and in an RSS feed.
- Dashboard: every key figure in one place, with interactive charts of ship traffic, pump prices, facility status and events, and free downloads of the data behind them.
- Chokepoints: daily ship traffic through the key straits and canals, compared with the six months before the crisis.
- Pump prices: weekly petrol and diesel prices by country, with the change since February 2026.
- What-if: close one or more chokepoints to see which flows are cut, what can be rerouted or bypassed, and who is most exposed.
Embed the map
Add the live map to an article, blog post or lesson. The embed shows the map only, with a small link back here, and stays current as the map updates every day. It's free to use.
Or link to the map-only view directly: strategicenergymap.org/?embed=1
Data sources
| What | Source | Refreshed |
|---|---|---|
| Infrastructure (locations, capacities, context) | Compiled from company, government and industry sources; each description is maintained in the open repository | As needed |
| Chokepoint ship traffic | IMF PortWatch (satellite AIS vessel tracking), loaded live in your browser on the map; the dashboard and downloads use a copy taken at each update | Daily, ~1 week lag |
| Events and facility status | Independent reporting and analysis, e.g. Reuters, AP, Al Jazeera, Lloyd's List, gCaptain, ISW / Critical Threats, IEA, UKMTO and JMIC advisories. Every item links its sources. | Daily |
| Hormuz and contested-waters flows | Independent ship-tracking only: Kpler, Vortexa, MarineTraffic, TankerTrackers.com, Bloomberg, IMF PortWatch, IEA analysis | As published |
| Benchmark prices (Brent, WTI, TTF, JKM, Henry Hub) | Exchange settlements as reported by Reuters and other market sources | Daily |
| Pump prices | US EIA weekly retail survey; European Commission Weekly Oil Bulletin; UK DESNZ weekly road fuel prices; ECB reference rates for US$ conversion | Weekly |
| What-if baselines | IEA Strait of Hormuz factsheet (Feb 2026, Kpler data); EIA chokepoint analysis (1H 2025, Vortexa data) | When updated |
| Basemap | Esri World Light Gray Canvas; map library Leaflet | — |
Download the data
The data behind the map is free to reuse under CC BY 4.0: use it in articles, research, teaching or your own tools, with credit to strategicenergymap.org. The dashboard lists each dataset with its columns and date. Six datasets are published as CSV and JSON at stable addresses under /data/v1/, rebuilt every time the site updates: chokepoint transits, pump prices, market benchmarks, infrastructure status, the asset register and the event log.
The underlying figures come from the sources named in each file and on this page. Their own terms apply to anything you take from them directly.
Sourcing rule
Several of the conflicts on this map involve governments whose statements are part of the conflict itself. The map follows one rule for all of them: currently the United States, Israel, Iran, the Houthis, Russia and Ukraine.
- Verify, then use. What a party to a conflict reports is used as fact only when it can be independently verified. Verifiable actions and statistics, such as a strategic reserve release or official price surveys, are used normally.
- Unverifiable claims are labelled. They appear only when the claim is itself news. They are attributed by name and marked unverified, and never become numbers, statuses or facts in the situation summary.
- Ship traffic through contested waters comes only from independent trackers, and the tracker is named. If no independent figure exists, the map shows none rather than weighing competing claims from the parties.
- Every figure must be traceable. A number whose origin can't be found is left out.
Confidence labels: confirmed means two or more independent sources, reported means one reputable independent source, and unverified means a claim by a party to the conflict.
How it stays current
An automated research agent (Claude, by Anthropic) runs every morning. It reviews independent reporting since its last run, updates events, facility status and prices, and refreshes pump prices from the official feeds. Every item it writes must cite a source it opened that day.
- Routine updates (new events, price refreshes, status notes) are published automatically.
- Bigger changes wait for human review: new facilities, critical-severity events, a chokepoint changing status, and corrections to earlier items.
- Automated checks validate every change before it is published, including the sourcing rule above.
- Significant developments, a daily digest and weekly charts are posted to @StratEnergyMap on X and @strategicenergymap.org on Bluesky, under the same sourcing rules.
- Once a week, an editor agent reviews search and social numbers and proposes the next week's priorities. Nothing it proposes takes effect until a person approves it.
- Every change is public in the project's history on GitHub.
The what-if model
Closing a chokepoint in the What-if tab estimates the immediate, physical effect on oil flows. It is deliberately simple:
- Flows are pre-crisis baselines: Hormuz from the IEA's 2025 figures (19.9 mb/d, about a quarter of seaborne oil trade), other chokepoints from 1H 2025 tanker-tracking.
- Bypass pipelines count only their spare capacity, at the low end of published ranges. A pipeline or export terminal that is currently offline or damaged is excluded, and the model warns when one is running reduced.
- Rerouting: where ships can sail around (the Cape of Good Hope, Indonesian straits), flows count as delayed, not lost.
- Net shortfall = flows with no alternative route, minus usable bypass capacity. It is compared with world demand (~104 mb/d) and IEA emergency stocks (~1.2 bn barrels).
It does not model price responses, demand destruction, production shut-ins, insurance, or how long stocks can actually be drawn. Flows through more than one chokepoint are counted at each, so combined scenarios are an upper bound. Treat it as a way to understand exposure, not a forecast.
Limits and corrections
- Locations are indicative. Pipeline routes are simplified and not survey-accurate.
- Many tankers in the Gulf are sailing with transponders off, so ship-tracking figures there understate actual traffic.
- Pump prices include taxes, which vary widely between countries. Much of the difference between countries comes from policy, not crude costs.
- This is an independent project, not investment, trading or security advice.
Spotted an error or a missing source? Open an issue on GitHub.
Privacy
No ads, no cookies, no sign-in and no tracking across sites. The site counts visits anonymously with Vercel Web Analytics, which stores no cookies or personal data. Ship-traffic data loads directly from the IMF's public service, and map tiles from Esri.
Who built this
Designed and built by Courtney Wilson as an independent project, using Claude Code for development and a scheduled Claude agent for daily research. The code, data and agent instructions are open on GitHub. Feedback and ideas are welcome on LinkedIn.
Recent updates
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