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2015/10/21
Strategic Maritime Passages
THE GEOGRAPHY OF TRANSPORT SYSTEMS
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Home > Contents > Chapter 1 > Application 2
Strategic Maritime Passages
Authors: Dr. Jean‐Paul Rodrigue and Dr. Theo Notteboom
1. Global Maritime Routes and Chokepoints
Maritime transportation is the dominant purveyor of international freight distribution and evolves
over a global maritime space. This space has its own constrains such as the profile of continental
masses and the imperatives it creates in terms of detours and passages. Maritime routes are
spaces of a few kilometers wide trying to avoid the discontinuities of land transport. They are a
function of obligatory points of passage, which are almost all strategic places, physical constraints
such coasts, winds, marine currents, depth, reefs, or ice and political boundaries where
sovereignty may impede circulation. The majority of the maritime circulation takes place along
coasts and three continents have limited fluvial trade (Africa, Australia and Asia; except China).
International maritime routes are thus forced to pass through specific locations corresponding to
passages, capes and straits. These routes are generally located between major industrial regions
such as Western Europe, North America and East Asia where an active system of commercial
containerized trade is in place. The importance of these large manufacturing regions and their
consumption markets are structuring exchanges of semi‐finished and finished goods. Also, major
routes involve flows of raw materials, namely minerals, grains, some food products (coffee, cocoa
and sugar), and most importantly petroleum. The location of strategic oil and mineral resources
shapes maritime routes for bulks since they represent the most transported commodities. For
instance, over 30 million barrels per day are being shipped around the world....