79 days ago, the Strait of Hormuz closed.

11 million barrels a day stopped moving. The IEA called it the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. Gasoline is $4.53 nationally. Diesel is $5.65. You already know that part.

What you don't know yet is what comes next.

This isn't an oil story. It's a cascade. Every refinery that processes crude produces sulphur as a byproduct. That sulphur becomes sulphuric acid. That acid grows your food, mines your copper, and starts your car. The Middle East supplies 24% of global sulphur. Half of seaborne trade moved through Hormuz.

It stopped moving 78 days ago.

The shortages that are coming aren't priced in.

The Chemical Nobody Is Talking About

Sulphuric acid is the most produced industrial chemical on earth. It's used in fertilizers, copper mining, semiconductor manufacturing, uranium extraction, lead-acid batteries, EV battery production and so much more.

About 50% of seaborne sulphur trade transited the Strait of Hormuz. In March, global sulphur loadings on dry bulk carriers collapsed 31% in a single month. Persian Gulf exports fell 66%.

Then on May 1, China, the world's largest sulphuric acid exporter, banned exports entirely to protect its own farmers. Three million annualized tonnes pulled from global markets overnight. Japan, South Korea, and India combined have 500,000 tonnes of spare export capacity. That's one-sixth of the gap.

The result: sulphuric acid CFR US Gulf went from $155/mt to $400/mt in ten weeks. A 158% increase. Sulphur is up 95% since February 28 — a bigger move than oil itself.

Here's why that matters for everything downstream.

Metals vs. Food: A War for Acid

Fifty-five to sixty percent of all sulphuric acid goes to fertilizer production. The rest goes to mining: leaching copper, processing nickel, extracting uranium, refining rare earths. When supply collapses, those two sectors fight over what's left.

Governments will be the ones to decide: Does the remaining supply go to food or to industry? Normally food would be the obvious choice. But, in a time of war will that decision change?

The supply constraints for mining are already showing up in the numbers. Chile, the world's largest copper producer, imported 151,000 tonnes of sulphuric acid from China in March 2025. February 2026: 32,000 tonnes. March 2026: zero. About 20% of global refined copper production depends on acid-leach operations. That's a physical availability problem, not a price problem.

Kazatomprom — 40% of global uranium supply — has already cut 2026 guidance by 10% citing sulphuric acid shortages for in-situ recovery. One of their major joint ventures was cut from 6,000 to 3,750 tonnes for the year. Their replacement acid plant isn't online until late 2026 at the earliest.

In Indonesian nickel, the feedstock for EV batteries, they need 25–30 tonnes of sulphuric acid per tonne of product. Huayou has already idled 50% of capacity. Indonesia sourced 75–80% of its sulphur from the Middle East last year.