When do ships choose Lombok instead of Malacca?
Lombok Strait sits at 8.5°S, 115.7°E and connects Indian Ocean ↔ Java Sea. The reference maps no modelled trade-route corridor onto this waypoint.
Lombok is deep and relatively uncluttered compared with Malacca–Singapore. Very large crude and ore carriers that cannot take Malacca’s draft come this way (often with Makassar) between the Indian Ocean and East Asian discharge ranges. SUZU Monitor therefore lists it next to Malacca even though no TRADE_ROUTES waypoint currently points here: it is the documented overflow, not a second copy of the 17.2 million-barrel Malacca baseline.
There is no EIA oil-transit baseline on Lombok itself and no energy shock model. The energy shock stays on Malacca. An empty modelled table means the corridor book has not yet encoded Lombok legs; it does not mean VLCC captains stopped using the strait.
SUZU 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 primary lane remains Malacca for ships that fit. Sunda Strait is a third Indonesian option but is shallower and more constrained than Lombok. When Malacca is the problem, Lombok is the deep-water answer this registry names.
Major trade routes through Lombok Strait
Lombok Strait is tracked as a strategic waterway reference. It is not currently mapped to one of SUZU Monitor's modelled trade-route corridors, but its vessel traffic and disruption signals are still monitored on the live map.
| Route | Category | Modelled volume | As of |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strategic waterway reference — corridor book unmapped, as of | |||
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 2026-10-18. 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 Lombok Strait
Is Lombok a substitute for the entire Malacca oil lane?
No. It is the deep-draft relief valve. The EIA 2023 oil-transit baseline of 17.2 million barrels a day sits on Malacca, not on Lombok.
Why is the modelled route table empty?
No TRADE_ROUTES waypoint uses lombok_strait yet. The page remains a strategic-waterway reference with live disruption monitoring.
How should readers use the Lombok Strait reference snapshot?
Read the April 9, 2026 registry copy with the live disruption pulse. Lombok Strait is tracked as a strategic waterway reference; modelled corridor rows are absent until TRADE_ROUTES gains a waypoint, which is not a claim that traffic is zero.