Why can the Montreux Convention close the Bosporus to more than grain?
Bosporus Strait sits at 41.1°N, 29°E and connects Black Sea ↔ Sea of Marmara. The reference maps 1 modelled trade-route corridor onto this waypoint.
The Bosporus is a city strait: a winding, current-scoured channel through Istanbul with no practical second mouth. Together with the Dardanelles it is the Turkish Straits. World Monitor’s registry id is bosphorus; the EIA 2023 series labels the same baseline Turkish Straits at 2.9 million barrels a day. Legal control is the Montreux Convention, which is a peacetime and wartime passage regime, not a lock schedule.
Only one modelled corridor uses this waypoint: Russia → Mediterranean (Oil) at 140M+ tonnes/year from Novorossiysk to Piraeus. Grain and other Black Sea bulk are operationally in the same geographic cork even when they are not a separate row in TRADE_ROUTES. There is no energy shock model on this waterway; the oil baseline exists, but the four-waterway shock set is Hormuz, Malacca, Suez, and Bab el-Mandeb.
The EIA World Oil Transit Chokepoints series records 2.9 million barrels a day on the Turkish Straits row. World Monitor does not enable the energy shock model on this waterway.
There is no second sea exit from the Black Sea. Overland and pipeline routes can move some oil and grain, but they do not recreate a Mediterranean tanker arrival. A Montreux restriction or a blocked channel therefore isolates Black Sea ports rather than adding days the way a Suez diversion does.
Major trade routes through Bosporus Strait
| Route | Category | Modelled volume | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Russia → Mediterranean (Oil) | Energy | 140M+ tonnes/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 Bosporus Strait
Is the Bosporus the same as the EIA “Turkish Straits” row?
World Monitor maps its bosphorus registry id to the EIA Turkish Straits baseline of 2.9 million barrels a day (2023). That EIA label covers the Bosporus–Dardanelles pair, not Istanbul alone.
Does World Monitor model an energy shock for the Bosporus?
No. Shock modelling is limited to four waterways. The Bosporus still has a committed EIA oil baseline and a modelled Russia → Mediterranean oil corridor.
Which modelled trade routes use Bosporus Strait?
Bosporus Strait is a waypoint on Russia → Mediterranean (Oil) (140M+ tonnes/year). Those corridor volumes are World Monitor modelled figures dated March 14, 2026 in the World Monitor trade-route reference.