SCN Global Flow Monitor - Simulate oil trade disruptions with real data
Show HN: I simulated closing the Strait of Hormuz on real oil trade data
SCN Global Flow Monitor is a powerful simulation tool that models global supply chain dynamics using real UN Comtrade data. It allows users to stress-test critical scenarios, such as a full blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, to visualize impacts on market prices, downstream flow losses, and emergency stockpile drawdowns. By leveraging fluid-stochastic network clearing and endogenous pricing models, this tool provides a coherent physical scenario analysis without relying on forecasts. It is an essential resource for understanding how bypass pipelines and capacity retention strategies affect global oil trade resilience under extreme disruption.
SIMULATION — stress test, not a forecast: We model worst coherent physical scenarios to reveal how supply chain networks truly react when critical chokepoints collapse.
- anigbrowl
An interesting fact to consider is that the US stockpile (the Strategic Petroleum Reserve) is reported as the total of sour (high sulfur) and sweet (low sulfur) crude oil. The sweet stock makes up about 1/3 of the reserve and hardly varies at all. This is because US refineries are virtually all configured for sour crude: due to a mistaken belief in the 1990s that sweet crude was running out, the industry bet the farm on sour crude refining, and if sour crude runs low, it's extremely economical to switch.
As a result, almost all the draw from the SPR is of sour crude (currently ~5 million barrels/week). However, you can't just use up all the reserve because as levels get lower brine must be pumped into the storage chambers to retain pumping pressure, and the more brine that is pumped, the more the output quality declines.
The weekly reports indicate a total in the SPR of about 300mbb, of which ~100 are sweet and 200 sour. But for the reasons above, output becomes unusable one the sour levels fall to ~140-150mbb, at which point there is almost certainly a severe diesel supply shock. At current drawdown rates, that would be sometime around October/November, right in the middle of harvest season when demand for diesel is highest.
There's more complexity to this than I want to type out in a HN comment, but not that much more. Draw your own conclusions.
- neom
Tangentially related but just watched this pretty interesting youtube mini-doc-thing about the recent moves China has been making regarding oil (and its bigger picture): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkA0bkb6ZO0
- molticrystal
Maybe I missed it looking over the paper, or maybe they are implicit, but are you taking into account Saudi Arabia’s East-West Crude Oil Pipeline (Petroline) , I believe it does about ~7m bpd and Habshan-Fujairah (Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline / ADCOP) about ~1.5m bpd? If not you might be underestimating things, though they do take a bit of a warmup to get into capacity, and can't match completely Hormuz's flow.
- HarHarVeryFunny
What concrete predictions does your model make?
What developments in pricing/other would indicate that your model is wrong or incomplete?
Nice website regardless, but I'm a bit skeptical that the dynamics of the global oil/energy market can be accurately predicted.
- Haven880
The biggest missing piece is China. Assuming actual delivered price is not subsidized by Western countries, you need to put in what if China demands that reflect the current price. Chinese in reality don't consume that much oil as what we thot they do from the oil purchases in the past. I assume Chinese just ramp down the purchase even though their consumption is well below that. Plus the hidden supplies from Iran and Russia to China via land route.
- NooneAtAll3
did you model rapid decrease of oil import by China?
- firasd
Very interesting. Here in India people were very concerned about potential cooking gas shortages (LPG) when the disruptions began which is also a good example of usually-overlooked dependencies on the the Strait
- kccqzy
Nice that you allowed readers to customize the parameters! I personally thought the demand demand elasticity was too low and I was able to adjust it.