OP created this visualization tool as a byproduct of a supply chain class taught at Columbia. The pedagogical exercise grew into a full visualization and paper about global oil trade. The model adapts Eisenberg-Noe financial network mechanics: instead of banks, every country consumes oil interconnected via bilateral trading. Shocks propagate throughout the network, depleting oil reserves when bottleneck nodes such as the Strait of Hormuz are blocked.

The interesting part is the mechanics of how the crisis unfolds: for example, France receives 0 oil from Hormuz directly, yet their reserves are depleted faster because other countries reactively increase their safety oil stock, increasing oil price, making stockouts more expensive for everyone. The model also gives price dynamics: the price increase is not immediate, it follows sequentially as countries' reserves deplete.

Caveats: 1. For producer nodes, depletion means their export slack is reduced/exhausted. 2. No sanctioned trade (UN Comtrade data). Technical details: the visualization is 600 lines of Flask plus JS frontend (LLM assisted). Paper with proofs/theory: arxiv.org/abs/2607.17491. The Hacker News post has 172 points and 82 comments.