A fully closed Strait of Hormuz was long seen as unthinkable " and unmanageable if it happened " based on past modeling and interviews with energy experts. Why it matters: That conventional wisdom underscores just how unprecedented today's closure is " and how little playbook exists for what could come next. The intrigue: In at least two major exercises assessing potential oil disruptions " one in 2007 and another in 2022 " energy experts considered a full shutdown of the strait but ultimately didn't model it in their planning. In both cases, they judged it either too unlikely or too large in scale to meaningfully plan around. "The idea was laughed out of the room," said Sam Ori, who worked on the 2007 exercise at the nonprofit SAFE. "The view was that it just wasn't credible and would be seen as alarmist."