What else was on that ship?

Three weeks into the Strait of Hormuz crisis, the global conversation remains fixed on oil. Brent crude above $100. Strategic petroleum reserves released. Warship escorts negotiated. The energy shock has a name, a price, and a response architecture.

But the same 21-mile waterway that carries a fifth of the world’s crude also carries commodities for which no comparable response exists. A third of global seaborne fertiliser. 44% of the world’s traded sulphur. 855 of Middle East polyethylene. Over a quarter of the global helium. The petrochemical feedstocks that become pharmaceutical raw materials, synthetic textiles, food packaging, rubber, batteries, and semiconductor fabrication gases.

The world spent fifty years building strategic petroleum reserves after the oil shocks of the 1970s. According to publicly available information, no country on earth maintains a comparable reserve for fertiliser, pharmaceutical feedstocks, or helium. The infrastructure of preparedness was built for the crisis everyone expected. Not the cascading crises that follow from the same chokepoint.

The invisible supply chains

Consider what actually transits the Strait beyond crude oil and LNG.

Fertiliser. Gulf exporters account for nearly half of global seaborne urea trade. QatarEnergy has declared force majeure. China has restricted phosphate exports. Urea prices have surged sharply in a matter of days. The timing is structurally dangerous: the Northern Hemisphere planting season is underway, and for South Asian agriculture, the Kharif window opens from May. Fertiliser not secured in the coming weeks cannot be applied this growing season. This deadline is biological. It does not wait for diplomacy.

Pharmaceuticals. Paracetamol is synthesised from phenol, a petrochemical derivative. Ibuprofen and metformin, the world’s most widely prescribed diabetes medication, likewise rely on petrochemical inputs at critical stages of production. Virtually all active pharmaceutical ingredients depend on such feedstocks, solvents or reagents at some stage of synthesis. India, which supplies a fifth of the world’s generic drugs, depends on the Strait for a significant share of its crude imports and on Gulf logistics hubs for consolidating Chinese chemical inputs. Supply chain analysts are already warning of potential shortages in essential generics within four to six weeks if the disruption persists.

Plastics and packaging. The same naphtha that becomes polyethylene for food packaging becomes phenol for a paracetamol tablet. Multiple Asian petrochemical crackers have declared force majeure. Food packaging costs represent a distinct inflation channel from energy, and they arrive at the consumer simultaneously with fertiliser-driven production cost increases.

Helium. Qatar produces roughly a third of global helium as a by-product of LNG processing. Helium is structurally different from every other commodity behind the Strait: it evaporates. Continuously. Even in sealed cryogenic containers. The global supply chain operates on approximately 45 days of buffer. Helium cools MRI machines, enables semiconductor lithography, and purges rocket propulsion systems. No substitute exists at scale. Spot prices have surged dramatically.

Aluminium, rubber, and specialty gases. The UAE is a major aluminium exporter; shipments through the Strait feed aerospace, automotive, and construction supply chains globally. Synthetic rubber, an oil derivative used in tyres, seals, and industrial hoses, faces price pressure within weeks of any sustained petroleum shock. Neon and argon, used in semiconductor fabrication, also transit the Gulf. The breadth of exposure is the point: this is not a single-commodity disruption. It is a systems disruption.

The precedent that should concern us

In 2021, Sri Lanka banned synthetic fertiliser imports for seven months. Rice yields fell by nearly a third. Prices surged, the country was forced to import rice it could no longer afford, and the economic shock became a political one. The government fell within 15 months. That disruption was domestic in origin, reversed within months, and confined to one economy.

Although this crisis begins with the same rupture, it is starkly different in every condition that contained the Sri Lanka episode. Fertiliser, pharmaceuticals, and industrial inputs that transit Hormuz supply not one economy but dozens across Asia. Moreover, this closure is externally imposed, now entering its fourth week, with neither party to the conflict signalling willingness to reopen it. A disruption of this duration does not simply reverse when the cause is removed. A study by the Complexity Science Hub, modelling 10,000 tankers across 1,315 ports, found that shutdowns beyond four weeks trigger cascading delays across global shipping networks that persist long after the waterway reopens. The exposure is not marginal. UNCTAD has assessed that up to $1.2 trillion in annual exports depend on the corridor.

The structural question

The oil shock has a playbook: strategic reserves, coordinated IEA releases, pipeline bypass capacity, diplomatic frameworks for escort and passage. These mechanisms exist because the 1970s forced their creation.

No equivalent exists for fertiliser, pharmaceutical feedstocks, helium, or the petrochemical intermediaries that underpin modern manufacturing. G7 countries do not maintain strategic fertiliser reserves. No nation stockpiles pharmaceutical-grade petrochemicals. Helium cannot be meaningfully stockpiled because it physically escapes containment. The pipeline Saudi Arabia built to bypass Hormuz carries oil, not ammonia.

This is the gap the current crisis exposes. We built preparedness for the commodity we feared losing most. We built nothing for the commodities that sustain food production, essential medicine, industrial manufacturing, and advanced technology.

What comes next

For import-dependent economies, which covers most of Asia, the oil shock is only the opening act. What follows it, across food prices, medicine supply, and industrial inputs, will prove harder to reverse and longer to resolve. Energy prices will eventually stabilise. Fertiliser has a planting calendar that does not wait. Medicine has a buffer stock that is draining. Helium has a physics problem that no policy can override.

The policymakers who respond most effectively to this crisis will not be the ones managing the oil response. They will be the ones who asked the question the oil price obscured: what else was on that ship?

The writer is Chairman of the Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA) and a student of technology and aspiring polymath