Chokepoints of world trade
Three narrow stretches of water, and how much of the world’s oil squeezes through each one.
The brief I set myself
Geopolitics channels explain the same few places again and again, and viewers have to know where those places are before the argument makes sense. The brief: put three chokepoints on a real 3D map in twenty seconds, in a channel’s own dark, cinematic style, with every number on screen traceable to one public source.
How it was made
The terrain is satellite imagery draped over real elevation in GEOlayers 3 and HeliumX, with the relief exaggerated and labelled as such so the Zagros and Sinai read on a phone. The camera makes one low pass over each strait. The shipping lanes are hand-placed on open water and checked point by point against the OpenStreetMap coastline, and the Hormuz width was measured on that same coastline rather than copied from a headline.
Every figure comes from the U.S. EIA’s chokepoint report, credited on screen next to the number. The ships are drawn, not tracked, and the screen says so. The vertical cut is a native tall layout from the same project, not a crop.
Credits and sources
- Client
- Spec piece in the style of a geopolitics YouTube channel. No client is named or implied.
- Role
- Script, data checks, 3D map, animation, sound design and edit, by Sanket.
- Tools
- After Effects, GEOlayers 3, HeliumX 3D terrain, Python for the data and sound checks.
- Oil flows
- U.S. Energy Information Administration, World Oil Transit Chokepoints (updated March 2026). 2026 note from the EIA Short-Term Energy Outlook, October 2026.
- Hormuz width
- 38 km at its narrowest, measured on the OpenStreetMap coastline. © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0.
- Places
- Coordinates from Wikidata (CC0).
- Imagery
- © Microsoft Corporation / Earthstar Geographics SIO, via GEOlayers 3. Relief is exaggerated so the mountains read on screen.
- Photo
- The strait at night from the ISS, NASA / Tim Kopra, public domain.
- Ships and routes
- Illustrative ships and indicative routes, not live positions. Ship counts follow the 2024 flows.
- Voice
- ElevenLabs library voice, not a clone of a real person. Disclosed on screen.
- Type
- Sofia Sans Extra Condensed, SIL Open Font License.
- Sound
- Own sound design. No music, so the channel can add its own.
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