What percentage of oil goes through the Strait of Hormuz?

A large share of seaborne oil trade, though the exact figure moves year to year. Use the current EIA chokepoint brief rather than a remembered number.

Is there an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz?

Not by sea. Bypass pipelines to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman coast exist, but their capacity is a fraction of seaborne volume.

Why the Strait of Hormuz matters

Plenty of waterways are narrow. This one matters because of what sits behind it and what does not exist beside it.

Three things have to be true at once

A chokepoint only matters if a lot moves through it, there is no practical way around it, and it is narrow enough to be affected by events. Most narrow waterways fail at least one of those tests. Hormuz passes all three.

Volume: A large share of seaborne crude and LNG passes through, with the Gulf states heavily dependent on it.
No substitute: It is the only sea exit from the Gulf. Bypass pipelines exist but carry a fraction of the seaborne volume.
Narrow: About 21 nautical miles at its narrowest, with usable lanes only two miles wide.

The absence of an alternative is the whole story

Compare it with Bab el-Mandeb, the other chokepoint it is usually mentioned alongside. Disruption there is expensive: ships go round the Cape of Good Hope instead, adding weeks and cost. Painful, but possible.

Hormuz has no equivalent. Cargo loaded at a Gulf terminal has exactly one way to reach open water. That is why disruption there produces a different order of reaction than disruption almost anywhere else.

What pipelines can and cannot do

Overland pipelines from the Gulf to the Red Sea and to the Gulf of Oman coast do exist, and they are the reason a closure would not be total. But their combined capacity has never come close to matching what leaves by sea, and building more is a matter of years rather than weeks.

Port development on the Gulf of Oman side, outside the strait, serves the same purpose and runs into the same limit: you can move some cargo, not most of it.

Which is why the geography gets so much attention

A channel you could cross in an afternoon carries a share of world energy trade that no other single point does, with no alternative behind it. The geography is unremarkable; the dependency is not.

Common questions

What percentage of oil goes through the Strait of Hormuz?: A large share of seaborne oil trade, though the exact figure moves year to year. Use the current EIA chokepoint brief rather than a remembered number.
Is there an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz?: Not by sea. Bypass pipelines to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman coast exist, but their capacity is a fraction of seaborne volume.