The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively shut down. What makes the closure so striking is how little it took. A targeted series of strikes in the vicinity of the Strait was enough to make insurers pull war-risk cover, suspending the operations of hundreds of ships. The Strait did not need to be physically sealed. It only needed to be unsafe.
The situation is unprecedented. For as long as the modern oil era has existed, the Strait of Hormuz has stayed open, through multiple wars and years of escalating tension. Commodity strategists are already calling this "the biggest energy crisis since the oil embargo in the 1970s." They are not exaggerating.

A Global Supply Shock

The effects on energy markets have been immediate. The 33-kilometre channel carries roughly 20 percent of the world's oil and LNG supply every day, and with virtually no commercial traffic moving, the disruption is already feeding through to prices worldwide. Brent crude, the main benchmark for global oil, has risen over 27 percent since the end of February This is set to push global inflation up nearly a full percentage point and meaningfully slow growth. 

Freight markets have repriced just as sharply. The obvious bypass, the Suez Canal and Red Sea corridor, is not safe either. Houthi forces have announced a resumption of attacks on commercial shipping there. The Cape of Good Hope, adding two to three weeks to every voyage, is now the only viable route for most cargo. With the added pressure of vessels redirecting through this route, there is no cheap alternative.

Bangladesh's Four Pressure Points

For Bangladesh, this is not a distant headline. It is a direct supply and fiscal shock, arriving at a moment when the country's reserves are still recovering and its energy buffers are dangerously thin. However, there is another way to read this moment. Every pressure point this crisis is exposing, on energy, food, remittances, and foreign exchange, is also a signpost pointing toward what Bangladesh needs to build. The pressures are significant, they are immediate, and four of them are converging at once.
The most urgent pressure is fuel, and here the picture is mixed rather than purely bleak. Diesel stocks at the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation cover just 14 to 15 days of national consumption, well below the 60 to 90 days that most countries hold as a minimum buffer. But there are meaningful reasons for cautious reassurance. By the sixth day of the closure, approximately 76 million barrels had accumulated in Gulf storage and can still be transported, according to J.P. Morgan. A few ships have already reached Chattogram Port after departing through the strait before the closure, carrying LNG and LPG cargoes, according to The Daily Star. The government has confirmed it is actively working to secure additional supply routes, and BPC shipments approved prior to the crisis are in transit.

The LNG picture is more precarious. Qatar and the UAE together supply 72 percent of Bangladesh's LNG, according to Kpler, and Qatar's main facilities are now shut. QatarEnergy has confirmed that restarting production will take two to four weeks even after hostilities end. The near-term consequence for ordinary people may be more load shedding, higher fuel prices, and longer queues at the pump. The government is taking measures to ration consumption, and it is up to us to abide by them.

The food impact will take longer to arrive, but it could last far longer than the crisis itself. Fertiliser is a direct petrochemical derivative, and March to April are among the most agriculturally critical months in Bangladesh's calendar. Boro rice, the country's single most important crop, is in full irrigation phase through end of April. A disruption to either fertiliser supply or power does not show up on dinner tables this month. They feed through to prices when the harvests arrive, six to nine months from now, and history suggests they can keep prices elevated for a year or more beyond that. 
Bangladesh could already have 12 to 18 months of higher food prices in the pipeline.

The garment sector's first problem is what goes into the clothes. About 70 percent of all textile fibers are oil derivatives, with polyester alone now exceeding all natural fibers combined. Bangladesh's manufacturers, already running on some of the thinnest margins in global manufacturing, are facing a simultaneous rise in the cost of synthetics and dyes, both petrochemical derivatives. That input cost inflation has no quick fix and no domestic alternative. 

The second problem is getting the clothes out. Significant volumes of garments are stranded at the airport, with major Gulf carriers having suspended flights from Dhaka. Dubai, one of the world's most important air cargo transshipment hubs, is effectively offline for Bangladeshi exporters. On the sea freight side, rerouting is adding weeks to delivery timelines on key European and US export lanes. In garment manufacturing, deadlines are not suggestions.

The third problem is what all of this does to the country's foreign exchange position. Garment exports are Bangladesh's largest source of hard currency. Fewer shipments dispatched, more penalties paid, and tighter margins earned means fewer dollars flowing in. That lands directly on forex reserves that are still in recovery, compounding the pressure from a rising oil import bill. Our energy import bill reached approximately $4.1 billion in the first nine months of FY2024-25, according to The Diplomat. Every dollar per barrel rise in oil inflates that figure. Higher oil prices also translate into more demand for the US dollar, making it more expensive. This makes imports more costly as the taka faces pressure.

Remittances are the other pillar of Bangladesh's foreign exchange, and the risks here run through a different channel entirely. Approximately 4.5 million Bangladeshis work across the six GCC countries, which account for a large share of total remittance income. In the aftermath of the war, GCC countries may see companies lay off foreign workers. This means lower inflows, and at a moment when the country needs every dollar it can secure, that gap will be felt.

Strategic Priorities: What Bangladesh Must Build 

If this crisis teaches Bangladesh one thing, it should be this: vulnerability that is known but unaddressed is a choice. In this case, some of those vulnerabilities were being actively addressed. Petrobangla had already planned to raise LNG intake from 56 cargoes in 2025 to 86 in 2026, a welcome sign of ambition. However, almost all that growth was routed through the Gulf. Scaling up energy imports is exactly the right instinct. Concentrating them through a single chokepoint is the problem this crisis has now made impossible to ignore.

Energy security is where the rebuilding starts. Diesel cover needs to move to a minimum of 60 to 90 days as an immediate target, with a strategic petroleum reserve of six to nine months as the medium-term goal. LNG sourcing must be diversified away from Qatar, which currently supplies 65 percent of our imports. Domestic renewables, where Bangladesh has genuine solar potential, need to be treated as an urgent national priority rather than a long-term aspiration. The case for increasing energy self-sufficiency has never been more plainly made.

Food security demands a parallel urgency. Protecting irrigation for the current planting season through the end of April is non-negotiable right now. A disruption here does not stay on the farm. It feeds through to the entire economy for the better part of two years. Beyond this season, building regional food storage, mechanising agriculture to reduce input dependency, and diversifying procurement would give the country far more room to absorb the next shock.

The labour market strategy needs a fundamental reset. Bangladesh has long been over-concentrated in Gulf labour markets, in lower-skilled roles that cap how much workers can earn and send home. Europe, East Asia, and Africa all face growing labour shortages, and Gulf instability is widening that opportunity further. The ceiling for Bangladeshi workers abroad is not their capability. It is language and skills, and both are addressable with deliberate investment. Diversifying the labour market and moving up the skills ladder is not just a crisis response. It is a strategy that would have been correct regardless of what happened in the Strait of Hormuz.

None of this is new thinking. Bangladesh has known what it needed to do for years. What this crisis has provided is the clearest possible argument for doing it now. History shows that the countries which come out of supply shocks stronger are the ones that used the disruption to act on what they already knew needed fixing. Bangladesh has that opportunity. The direction is clear. The time is now.

Ayesha Tariq, CFA is the CEO and Co-Founder of MacroVisor, an independent research firm focused on macro-economic insights and cross-asset investment strategies.

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