Strait of Malacca

The Strait of Malacca is a narrow stretch of water between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra, connecting the Pacific Ocean in the east to the Indian Ocean in the west. It runs about 930 kilometers long and narrows to as little as 38 kilometers wide, with an average depth of only about 25 meters, a shallowness that constrains the size of ships able to pass through and defines the so-called Malaccamax standard. More than 94,000 vessels transit the strait every year, making it the world's busiest shipping lane, and it carries roughly a quarter of the world's traded goods, including a large share of the oil and gas shipped by sea.