What are the alternatives to the strait in the event of closure?
Maritime Routes
Three Pacific chokepoints in the Indonesian archipelago offer longer, costlier detours:
Sunda Strait (minimum width ~24 km)
Lombok and Makassar Straits (~20 km)
Ombai–Wetar Straits near Timor (~27 km)
Northern Sea Route (NSR), a Russian Arctic shipping lane, offers an alternative path for energy shipments to Asia
Land-based Routes
1.
Thailand Land Bridge: Proposed 90 km rail/road/pipeline link across the Kra Isthmus connecting the Indian and Pacific Oceans2.
China–Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC): Oil pipelines linking the Indian Ocean to China via Myanmar. However, its capacity - 442,000 barrels of oil per day is a far cry from 23.2 million bpd flowing through the Malacca Strait3.
China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC): Proposed 3,600 km pipeline from Gwadar Port to China’s Xinjiang (capacity ~1 million bpd)None of the proposed routes can presently fully replace the Malacca Strait—leaving it a critical global chokepoint.