A large number of internet pundits have abandoned their earlier fields of expertise in virology, epidemiology, and deep sea submersible design, and become experts in global supply chains, seizing on the president's statements that we don't need the Strait of Hormuz opened. (Although he also issued
a stern ultimatum that they'd better open it by today, or else!)
While it's possibly true that none of the gasoline in the tanks of my cars originated in the Persian Gulf, that's kinda immaterial, despite what the Very Serious Economy Understanders are telling me.
See, the Gulf States are sitting on a massive natural gas deposit. In order to utilize this gas, they sell some of it, but also put it to other uses.
For example, do you know why Alcoa built their smelting plants near hydroelectric dams? Because the Hall-Héroult process for smelting aluminum takes a tremendous amount of electricity.
Bahrain and Qatar use natural gas electrical plants to do what Niagara Falls and the TVA did in the US; namely to drive massive aluminum smelters. Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) and Qatalum alone produce a significant percentage of the world's aluminum. Half of all aluminum used in the US is imported, mostly from Canada, but the second and third largest sources are the UAE and Bahrain. Further, since very little alumina and bauxite is actually mined in the Gulf States, most of the ore has to be shipped there in the first place... through the Strait of Hormuz, before the finished aluminum is shipped back out... through the Strait of Hormuz. The war has
already seriously dinged aluminum production and shipping.
Another thing that the natural gas in the Gulf States gets used for is the Haber process. Before Fritz Haber figured out a way to produce ammonia by reacting atmospheric nitrogen with hydrogen, nations used to
go to war for control of islands covered in fossilized seabird crap because it was needed to produce the nitrates necessary for things like gunpowder and fertilizer. You are alive today because of the revolution in farm productivity allowed by ammonium nitrate fertilizers.
About a quarter of the nitrates for the fertilizer that the farmers in the US use is produced on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz.
Finally, even if every drop of petroleum that shipped out through the Strait of Hormuz went to China, Vietnam, South Korea, Japan, and Thailand, a very large amount of that does not get used to make fuel for Tokyo salarymen's Toyotas and PLA tanks. It gets used to make... plastic. And if you can't touch something plastic made in China/Japan/Korea/et cetera from where you're sitting right now, I'll eat my hat.
Hell, you're probably sitting on a chair made with petroleum while reading this on a monitor made with petroleum and about to compose an angry email on a keyboard made with petroleum... all of which went through the Strait of Hormuz.
So, yeah, it's kinda important.
