Why India must rethink maritime security after Hormuz crisis

India’s exposure in the current Hormuz crisis underlines that maritime energy and trade routes are not a peripheral concern but a central variable in its long‑term growth and strategic autonomy. The data emerging from this crisis gives reason to argue that New Delhi must treat sea lanes of communication almost the way it treats land borders: with sustained political attention, resources, and hedging strategies.

The Hormuz Crisis

The Strait of Hormuz carries about 20 million barrels per day of oil—roughly a quarter of global seaborne oil trade and around 20 per cent of total daily oil supply. It is also a major artery for LNG and even fertilisers, with about one-third of global seaborne fertiliser trade transiting this narrow waterway. When military escalation and attacks on shipping recently reduced tanker traffic by about 70 per cent and then almost to zero, roughly one‑fifth of global oil flows and significant LNG volumes were abruptly stranded in and around the Persian Gulf.

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India is structurally exposed to this chokepoint. Around 46–50 per cent of India’s crude oil imports and over 60 per cent of its LNG/LPG have typically moved through Hormuz, primarily from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Iran. India imports over 88–85 per cent of its crude oil needs and more than half of its natural gas in various forms, the bulk of it coming by sea along vulnerable sea lines of communication. Put differently, a single narrow corridor between Iran and Oman has been carrying nearly half of the energy that fuels the world’s third‑largest oil consumer and a major Asian growth pole.

The crisis has already translated into market stress. Brent crude spiked above 90 dollars a barrel on the disruption news, war‑risk insurance premia for tankers surged, and freight rates and marine fuel costs have all increased, feeding through into global inflation and shipping costs. For India, which remains a price‑sensitive importer with a large current‑account exposure to energy imports, such volatility translates into macroeconomic risk: pressure on the rupee, higher subsidy burdens, and imported inflation hitting both industry and households.

India’s broader trade profile adds another layer of vulnerability. Nearly 16 per cent of India’s total trade is heavily tied to Hormuz corridor economies, a proportion higher than that of several other major Asian importers such as South Korea and Japan. More than a third of India’s imports within this 16

per cent exposure are concentrated in a handful of Gulf states, making supply chain disruption not just an energy issue but a wider industrial and trading risk. When you combine this structural dependence with the fact that Suez/Red Sea traffic has also been periodically disrupted by Houthi attacks, forcing rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope, the picture is of a double chokepoint vulnerability from West Asia to Europe.

The real significance of the current Hormuz shutdown is that it has forced rapid improvisation. New Delhi has publicised that roughly 60–70 per cent of India’s crude imports is now being sourced through alternative corridors from an expanded pool of about 40 supplier countries, compared with reliance on 27 suppliers a decade ago. This diversification is a rational crisis response, but it also reveals how thin India’s pre‑crisis redundancy actually was. If nearly half your oil and most of your LNG can be jeopardised within a matter of days by a regional war you do not control, then maritime energy routes are clearly a first‑order strategic variable, not a routine logistical detail.

Securing Maritime Lifelines

Since the 1990s, India’s liberalisation‑led growth has driven a relentless increase in energy and trade volumes, but its maritime security thinking has lagged behind the pace and complexity of that dependence. About 95 per cent of India’s trade by volume and around 70 per cent by value still moves by sea; the economy’s export‑led components and import‑dependent sectors, from petrochemicals to fertilisers to electronics, are all ultimately tied to a small number of global chokepoints. As India aims for a $10 trillion economy in the near future, energy security through vulnerable sea lanes becomes a systemic constraint.

Domestically, Delhi has launched port‑led development initiatives such as Sagarmala to expand capacity, increase coastal and inland waterway traffic, and integrate ports with hinterland logistics. These have yielded a more than 100 per cent rise in coastal shipping traffic over the past decade and are projected to push coastal and inland cargo movements sharply higher by the mid‑2020s. But Sagarmala and related projects focus more on efficiency and connectivity within India’s maritime ecosystem than on external route diversification and chokepoint risk.

At sea, the Indian Navy has built a credible record of keeping parts of the global commons open, most visibly through sustained anti‑piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden since 2008 and convoy escorts for hundreds of merchant ships of multiple flags. Yet the Hormuz crisis is not a piracy problem: it sits at the intersection of state-on-state conflict, missile and drone threats, and great-power contestation. Securing India’s energy sea lanes in this environment demands more than episodic naval presence; it calls for persistent maritime domain awareness, coalition operations, and the ability to project limited but decisive power along key Sea Lines of Communication (SLOCs) from the Arabian Sea to the Western Pacific.

The data also shows that India’s exposure is comparatively higher than several Asian peers when you factor in the share of total trade tied to Hormuz economies and the share of LNG imports from them. Japan may have a higher oil import share from the Gulf, but India’s overall economic and demographic trajectory, twin SLOC exposure (Hormuz plus Red Sea/Suez), and still‑developing naval and merchant marine capacities make its vulnerability structurally different. The crisis thus becomes a strong empirical case for mainstreaming maritime route security into economic policy rather than treating it as a specialised naval concern.

How India Can Build Greater Resilience

Deepen and institutionalise supplier diversification

The emergency shift to about 40 supplier countries should be converted into a long‑term portfolio strategy rather than a temporary workaround. India can formalise flexible, multi‑year offtake contracts with a broader mix of producers (including Russia, Africa, and Latin America) that include clauses for route flexibility, force majeure handling, and price ceilings tied to specific chokepoint disruptions. Over time, this would reduce the proportion of India’s oil and gas that physically must pass through Hormuz or Bab‑el‑Mandeb at any given time.

Invest in redundancy of routes and infrastructure

Beyond Chabahar and the International North‑South Transport Corridor (INSTC), which already offer some overland diversification to Central Asia and Russia, India can back selective pipeline projects and LNG chains that bypass Hormuz—notably from East Africa or Russia’s Arctic and Far East. Domestically, expanding coastal refinery capacity and flexible terminals across both coasts can allow swing re‑routing of cargoes, while greater storage and blending facilities enhance the ability to smooth short‑term shocks.

Expand strategic petroleum and gas storage

India’s current strategic petroleum reserves (SPRs) are limited relative to its import dependence and demand trajectory. Scaling these reserves to cover a larger number of days of net imports—and extending the concept to LNG storage and floating storage regasification units (FSRUs)—would create a buffer against sudden maritime disruptions. This would also strengthen India’s bargaining position in spot and futures markets during crises.

Strengthen naval and maritime security posture along SLOCs

The Indian Navy’s anti‑piracy experience provides an operational foundation for broader SLOC security missions from the Gulf of Aden through the Arabian Sea to the Malacca Strait. India can move towards more continuous task‑group deployments, joint patrols, and information‑sharing arrangements with like‑minded navies specifically focused on energy shipping lanes. Enhancing maritime domain awareness—through satellites, seabed sensors, and cooperative sharing centres—would allow earlier detection of threats to tankers and LNG carriers.

Integrate port‑led development with energy security planning

Sagarmala and inland waterway initiatives should explicitly incorporate the needs of energy security: priority berths for tankers and LNG, resilient fuel supply chains for coastal power plants, and rapid re‑routing capacity when external routes are disrupted. This would mean aligning domestic maritime infrastructure planning with scenarios involving Hormuz or Suez closures, rather than assuming smooth global flows as a baseline.

Embed maritime risk into macroeconomic and diplomatic strategy

Finally, the Hormuz crisis shows that maritime chokepoints are simultaneously economic, strategic, and diplomatic theatres. India’s macro‑planning—on inflation, balance of payments, and growth—should model recurring SLOC disruptions as a structural feature, not a rare shock. Diplomatically, India can leverage its role as a major energy buyer to push for cooperative security arrangements in the Gulf and Arabian Sea, while also building mini-lateral groupings around critical SLOCs with partners who share an interest in keeping these arteries open.

It would be naïve to believe that even when the war in Iran ends, the crisis and contestation on maritime trade routes and chokepoints would be over – in fact, a new era of such conflict would only just be beginning.

(Hindol Sengupta is a professor of international relations and director of the India Institute at the OP Jindal Global University. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.)