The 94,301 transits of 2024 average about 258 ships a day, or one roughly every five and a half minutes, on VCA’s calculation. At Phillips Channel off the southern tip of Singapore, the Strait of Singapore narrows to about 1.96 nautical miles, Mohd Hazmi bin Mohd Rusli, then pursuing PhD studies at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security at the University of Wollongong, wrote in a September 2011 commentary for Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. He described the stretch covered by the Traffic Separation Scheme, the system of eastbound and westbound lanes, as the hardest to navigate: it extends for 250 nautical miles and has six choke points with an average depth of about 23 metres. In 2017 the EIA described the narrow channel as a natural bottleneck with the potential for collisions, groundings or oil spills.

The diversion of ships around the Cape of Good Hope had disrupted arrival schedules and caused a “vessels bunching” effect, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) said on 30 May 2024. Where container arrivals could not be rescheduled, the average berth wait was about two to three days, MPA said. Container trackers Linerlytica and PortCast said delays could last up to a week, against a norm of less than a day, Reuters reported on 26 June 2024.

Port operator PSA reactivated older berths and yards at Keppel Terminal, MPA said in May 2024. In a release on 15 January 2025, MPA said most container vessels completed cargo handling and bunkering within a day of arrival, after measures that included new berths at Tuas Port.

ReCAAP ISC recorded 62 incidents in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore in 2024, down from 63 in 2023, while incidents across Asia rose 6 per cent to 107, according to its 2024 annual report. The straits then accounted for 80 of Asia’s 95 incidents between January and June 2025, against 21 a year earlier, and 79 of the 80 occurred in the Singapore Strait, the centre said on 10 July 2025. Crew were not injured in 90 per cent of the straits’ incidents, the centre said.

Eleven berths were operating at Tuas Port by January 2025, with seven more due by 2027, MPA said in January 2025. When completed in the 2040s, Tuas will be one of the world’s largest fully automated terminals, with capacity for 65 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs), according to an MPA factsheet of 5 March 2024. Malaysian terminal operator Westports began its Westports 2 expansion at Port Klang, covering terminals CT10 to CT17, on 27 September 2024. In Indonesia, Dubai-based DP World agreed in August 2023 with Indonesian port company Pelindo and the Indonesia Investment Authority to run Belawan New Container Terminal and raise its capacity to 1.4 million TEUs from 600,000.

The Philippines has more seaports than most members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) but trails other ASEAN countries in port development and international sea cargo volume, the state-funded think tank Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) said on 2 November 2022. “The conflicting role of government agencies has contributed to the low quality of services and the inefficient functioning of ports,” said PIDS research fellow Kris Francisco.

Singapore sold 0.88 million tonnes of biofuel blends as marine fuel in 2024, up from 0.52 million tonnes in 2023, and liquefied natural gas bunker sales rose from 0.11 million to 0.46 million tonnes, MPA said in January 2025.

If the Strait of Malacca were blocked, nearly half of the world’s shipping fleet would have to reroute around the Indonesian archipelago, through the Lombok or Sunda straits, adding to shipping costs, the EIA estimated in 2017. Rerouting around the Cape to avoid the Red Sea was the biggest single driver of container shipping demand in 2024, adding 12 per cent, according to the 2024 Shipping Market Review published on 20 January 2025 by Clarksons Research, part of shipping services group Clarksons.

ReCAAP ISC Executive Director Vijay D Chafekar urged littoral state authorities on 10 July 2025 “to increase their presence in locations where incidents are occurring repeatedly”. VCA’s assessment is that, as at August 2025, the nearer risks are a repeat of the 2024 bunching at Singapore and further boardings in the Singapore Strait. In VCA’s view, manufacturers that depend on the route should know how much schedule slack and buffer stock they hold if that bunching returns.

Correction, 23 September 2026: An earlier version of this article presented Singapore port congestion from mid-2024 as current and included an unsourced container rate figure. These have been corrected, and the security section updated with 2025 data.

Correction, 27 September 2026: This article was revised to correct the following. The headline and summary described the strait as at a “breaking point” and in “crisis”, which no source supported, and presented Singapore’s mid-2024 congestion as current. An earlier version said the strait carried “nearly a quarter” of world trade, which its source did not support; the article now gives the US Energy Information Administration’s estimate of oil flows through the strait in 2023, sourced to the EIA. It gave Singapore vessel counts, including “639 in April”, which the cited advisory gave as “just over 600”; these are replaced by the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore’s statement of 30 May 2024 on berth waits. A quote attributed to Vinturas chief executive Ronald Kleijwegt did not match its source and is removed, as is a quote from Linerlytica that could not be traced to a primary source. It described Mohd Hazmi bin Mohd Rusli as an RSIS maritime law expert; he was pursuing PhD studies at the Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security when he wrote for the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in September 2011, and his words are now paraphrased. The EIA estimate that nearly half of the world’s fleet would need to reroute is now dated to 2017. The Red Sea demand figure is now credited to Clarksons Research and limited to container shipping (12 per cent). It said Singapore used biofuel and liquefied natural gas in 2024; MPA’s figures are for sales. It described Tuas as the world’s largest fully automated container terminal; MPA’s March 2024 factsheet says it will be one of the world’s largest fully automated terminals when completed in the 2040s. Statements on rerouting distance and time, ballast water and ship waste rules, electric vehicle supply chains, a 2017 daily traffic figure, joint patrols, South China Sea tensions and environmental damage, which were unsourced or relied on a broken or weak source, were removed. The 2025 full-year robbery figure, which postdates publication, was moved to an update note, and other sources were replaced with primary sources where available.

Update, 27 September 2026: The ReCAAP Information Sharing Centre reported 108 sea robbery incidents in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore in 2025, the highest number it recorded there in the 19 years from 2007 to 2025, according to its annual report press release of 9 January 2026. The centre said about 87 per cent of those incidents occurred between January and July 2025, and that incidents declined significantly from August to December 2025 following arrests of perpetrators by Indonesian authorities in July and August 2025. In the first half of 2026 it recorded 21 incidents in the straits, 74 per cent fewer than the 80 of the first half of 2025, the centre said on 14 July 2026. The article describes the position as at 29 August 2025.