When is the Cape of Good Hope a chokepoint rather than just a longer road?
Cape of Good Hope sits at 34.36°S, 18.49°E and connects Atlantic ↔ Indian Ocean. The reference maps 3 modelled trade-route corridors onto this waypoint.
The Cape is open ocean with no lock and no strait cork. World Monitor still lists it among the 13 because it is the overflow valve that prices Suez risk. When Red Sea security collapses, this is where the AIS density moves. Treating it as a monitored waterway lets the live pulse and the modelled table name the same fallback instead of leaving “ships went the long way” as a footnote.
Three modelled corridors use this waypoint: Brazil → China (Bulk) at 350M+ tonnes/year, Persian Gulf → Americas (Cape Route) at 2M+ bpd, and Asia → Europe (Cape Route) at 5M+ TEU/year. The bulk Brazil–China leg is a structural Cape user, not a Suez refugee. The other two are explicit Suez alternatives already cross-linked from Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, and Suez pages.
World Monitor does not enable the energy shock model on this waterway. This waterway has no row in the committed 2023 EIA World Oil Transit Chokepoints series.
The Cape is the alternative. Weather, bunker, and pirate-risk off West Africa are the frictions, not a second African canal. There is no EIA oil-transit baseline and no energy shock model; a Cape “closure” would be a storm or a port strike, not a missing geographic gap.
Major trade routes through Cape of Good Hope
| Route | Category | Modelled volume | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brazil → China (Bulk) | Bulk | 350M+ tonnes/year | |
| Persian Gulf → Americas (Cape Route) | Energy | 2M+ bpd | |
| Asia → Europe (Cape Route) | Container | 5M+ TEU/year |
How to read this page
The crawlable Dataset is the registry-and-route snapshot under the chokepoint disruption methodology. Live pulse tiles are a separately frozen observation and are not copied into this Dataset. Modelled corridor volumes are dated .
Template revision 2026-09-10. Reference observation . This note is a methodology-revision stamp, not a live AIS clock. Published revisions that affect this page are in the corrections log.
Questions about Cape of Good Hope
Why monitor an open-ocean cape as a chokepoint?
Because it is the documented Suez/Bab el-Mandeb overflow and a structural Brazil–China bulk lane. The 13-waterway set is about optionality, not only narrowness.
Does the Cape have an EIA oil baseline?
No. World Monitor does not attach an EIA World Oil Transit Chokepoints row or an energy shock model to the Cape of Good Hope.
Which modelled trade routes use Cape of Good Hope?
Cape of Good Hope is a waypoint on Brazil → China (Bulk) (350M+ tonnes/year); Persian Gulf → Americas (Cape Route) (2M+ bpd); Asia → Europe (Cape Route) (5M+ TEU/year). Those corridor volumes are World Monitor modelled figures dated March 14, 2026 in the World Monitor trade-route reference.