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FRANKFURT, Germany — <\/span>When Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz<\/a> at the start of the war<\/a>, choking off sea passage for some 15 million barrels of oil a day, many feared that prices would skyrocket, cratering the world economy.<\/p>\n Instead, nearly seven months on, oil is expensive but not exorbitant<\/a>, and analysts say the supply is pretty much sufficient to meet current global needs, even as the higher prices cause political problems<\/a> for U.S. President Donald Trump<\/a> and others.<\/p>\n That’s because Saudi Arabia and other Gulf producers quickly found alternative routes and reached for unused pipeline capacity. When Iran and its militant allies targeted those<\/a>, the oil exporters and the U.S. military found others \u2014 workarounds for the workarounds \u2014 in an often clandestine game of whack-a-mole.<\/p>\n With oil now at around $100 a barrel \u2014 higher than before the war but not as bad as feared \u2014 Iran has diminished leverage, while a U.S. naval blockade and tightened sanctions smother its own economy<\/a>.<\/p>\n But the workarounds are expensive and may not be sustainable. The drawing down of existing commercial oil stocks \u2014 especially by China<\/a> \u2014 has also helped keep prices in check, but cannot continue indefinitely. And Iran could yet gain an edge with continued attacks on key oil facilities.<\/p>\n Iran began attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz in response to the U.S.-Israeli bombardment that started the war. In response, the Saudis turned to their East-West pipeline that carries oil to their Red Sea port of Yanbu. <\/p>\n From there, tankers headed out through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait toward Asia. Likewise, the United Arab Emirates used its pipeline cutting across neighboring Oman to Fujairah \u2014 a route that skirts the strait.<\/p>\n Both pipelines had spare capacity, and the UAE’s state oil company ADNOC and Saudi Aramco used it to keep exports from collapsing completely during the first weeks of the war.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, some oil leaked out of the Strait of Hormuz. In May<\/a>, ship operators willing to risk Iranian attack started taking advantage of a U.S.-supervised route near Oman, defying Iran’s demands to use its own vetted route. They shuttled back and forth at night with location systems and mobile phones turned off, and offloaded to tankers waiting outside the strait. Flows from Kuwait, Iraq, and the UAE started to rise again.<\/p>\n But Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen disrupted the Yanbu workaround in July by declaring a blockade<\/a> of Saudi oil shipments, threatening the Bab el-Mandeb \u2014 a repeat of the Hormuz disruption. <\/p>\n In response, the Saudis redirected Asia shipments northwest to the Mediterranean, either through the Suez Canal or \u2014 for tankers too big to use it \u2014 a pipeline across Egypt to another tanker. The oil then made a huge detour as it was shipped around Africa and back to Asia.<\/p>\n