Strait of Malacca

The Détroit of Malacca is a long maritime corridor of the south-east of the Asia located between the Malayan Péninsule and the island Indonesia of Sumatra, and connecting the Mer of Andaman, bordering Mer of the Indian Ocean, with the southernmost China Sea, in the south.

The strait is long of approximately 800 km, extends from south-east towards the North-West and is of a width ranging between 50 km and 320 km. It makes only 2,8 km broad in its narrowest point, the strait of Philips in the strait of Singapore. Several islands are in its southernmost part.

It took an importance Stratégique of first order, while being the main roads of provisioning of Pétrole of two of the principal world consumers, the Japan and the China. The largest ports are Melaka (Malaysia) and Singapore.

Geostrategic importance

The strait of Malacca east one of the most important ways of navigation in the world, and knows a traffic equivalent to that of the Suez Canal. It constitutes one of the principal ways of passage between the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean, connecting four of the countries most populated to the world: the India, the Indonesia, the Japan and the China. Some figures testify some:

more 50 000 ships borrow it each year;
between 20 and 25% of the world maritime transport spends each year there;
half of the maritime trade of Pétrole forwards there (more 11 million Barrel S in 2003, is 1 700 000 m ³), and this traffic are in constant increase, according to the Chinese economic growth.

This important traffic and its narrowness made of it a zone privileged for the Piraterie and a potential target of the Terrorisme. Piracy has become an main issue for one decade, the number of attacks passing of 25 in 1994 to 220 in 2000, before going down again to 150 in 2003, that is to say one the third of world piracy. It is estimated that in 2004, the record of the year 2000 should be joined. The navy Malaysian, indonésienne and Singaporean increased their patrols as from July 2004.

A terrorist attack could, by running a large ship in the shallow waters (only 25 m of depth at the major point), butcher indeed traffic. Such an attack would have important consequences on the world commerce.

Skirtings

The Thailand worked out several plans in order to reduce the economic importance of the strait of Malacca. He thus proposed several projects of channel through the Isthme of Kra, thus saving 600 miles of navigation enters Africa or the Middle East and the Pacific.

However, this channel would divide Thailand in two, by isolating the provinces from the south, in particular Narathiwat, Pattani and Yala with the Moslem minority, of the remainder of the country. Moreover, its prohibitory cost lets think that this channel will not be born before a long time, in spite of the desires of the politicians inhabitant of Thailand.

Another means of circumventing the strait would be to build a Oléoduc through the isthmus, which would make it possible to transport the waiting Pétrole worms of the ships on other side, at a cost of 50 hundreds the barrel.

This project of pipeline is competed with by another project through the Burma, or directly by the Xinjiang (in continental China), whose construction began in October 2004.

Apart from these projects of channel and pipeline, there exist two alternate sea routes:

- By the Strait of the Probe
- By the Strait of Lombok and the Strait of Makassar.

These two roads are also exposed to piracy and terrorism. Moreover, the strait of the Probe is too not very deep to allow the passage of the ships of the type Malaccamax

Zh-min-nan: Malacca Hái-kiap

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