The Nile, the longest river in the world (4,160 miles), Tim Marshall explains (in Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World), affects ten countries considered to be in the proximity of its basin — Burundi, the DRC, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, and Egypt:
As long ago as the fifth century BCE, the historian Herodotus said: “Egypt is the Nile, and the Nile is Egypt.” It is still true, and so a threat to the supply to Egypt’s seven-hundred-mile-long, fully navigable section of the Nile is for Cairo a concern—one over which it would be prepared to go to war.
Without the Nile, there would be no one there. It may be a huge country, but the vast majority of its 84 million population lives within a few miles of the Nile. Measured by the area in which people dwell, Egypt is one of the most densely populated countries in the world.
Egypt was, arguably, a nation state when most Europeans were living in mud huts, but it was never more than a regional power. It is protected by deserts on three sides and might have become a great power in the Mediterranean region but for one problem. There are hardly any trees in Egypt, and for most of history, if you didn’t have trees you couldn’t build a great navy with which to project your power. There has always been an Egyptian navy—it used to import cedar from Lebanon to build ships at huge expense—but it has never been a blue-water navy.
Modern Egypt now has the most powerful armed forces of all the Arab states, thanks to American military aid; but it remains contained by deserts, the sea, and its peace treaty with Israel. It will remain in the news as it struggles to cope with feeding 84 million people a day while battling an Islamist insurgency, especially in the Sinai, and guarding the Suez Canal, through which passes 8 percent of the world’s entire trade every day. Some 2.5 percent of the world’s oil passes this way daily; closing the canal would add about fifteen days’ transit time to Europe and ten to the United States, with concurrent costs.
Per U.S. EIA’s Country Analysis Brief: World Oil Transit Chokepoints (June 25, 2024), about 8.6% of the world’s oil passed through the Suez Canal and SUMED pipeline in 2023, considerably more than the 2.5% claimed by the author. The book was published in 2015, and there is some fluctuation year-to-year, but even in 2018 the figure was about 8.2%.
Great catch, Jim. The discrepancy calls into question the validity of the authors claims. I suppose in this climate, volatility is something that skews data in general, which is somewhat deflating given I thought the book was well constructed.
Transposition, perhaps?
Would ’2.5% of world’s entire trade’ and ’8% of world’s oil’ fit?
Thanks, Franklin.
Redan, I considered that possibility, but the text gives no hint of it: “Egypt…will remain in the news…as it struggles to…feed[] 84 million people a day…and guard[] the Suez Canal, through which passes 8 percent of the world’s entire trade every day.” “World’s entire trade” clearly suggests trade of oil and non-oil alike, and the later 2.5-percent figure of the world’s oil trade through the Suez Canal is given as a specific elaboration.
Strictly speaking, U.S. EIA’s report aggregates the SUMED pipeline with the Suez Canal, whereas the author makes no mention of the pipeline. Nevertheless, the author mentions the Suez Canal in the context of “an Islamist [sic] insurgency” and the “guarding” of the Canal therefrom, and one may reasonably assume that the security profile of the Canal and the pipeline are similar: whoever controls one is extremely likely to control the other.
Per U.S. EIA’s Three important oil trade chokepoints are located around the Arabian Peninsula (August 4, 2017), in 2016, “3.9 million b/d of crude oil and refined products transited the Suez Canal in both directions”, and “1.6 million b/d of crude oil [were] transported through the SUMED Pipeline to the Mediterranean Sea and then loaded onto tankers for seaborne trade”. Inferentially, the SUMED pipeline accounts for about two-fifths, and the Suez Canal accounts for about three-fifths, of oil transit through Egypt. In the same year, per U.S. EIA’s World Oil Transit Chokepoints (July 25, 2017), world total oil supply was 97.2 million b/d, such that about 3.4 percent passed through the Suez Canal, about 2.3 percent passed through the SUMED pipeline, and about 5.7 percent passed through both in the aggregate.
It isn’t clear why the author chose to mention the oil transit of the Suez Canal without mentioning that of the SUMED pipeline. Perhaps he does so later in his work.