The Gulf is building beyond Hormuz

The UAE faces a simpler and potentially faster opportunity. Expanding the Abu Dhabi-Fujairah pipeline would allow more crude to reach the Gulf of Oman without transiting Hormuz. Because the route lies entirely within the federation, it avoids many of the political complications that often undermine cross-border projects.

 

The more ambitious proposals are also the most difficult. Iraq has long sought export routes beyond the Gulf. Expanding the Iraq-Türkiye pipeline to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan would provide one option, while the proposed Basra-Aqaba pipeline through Jordan would give Iraqi crude direct access to the Red Sea. Both projects continue to face familiar obstacles including financing, regional politics and security risks. Another recurring proposal, reviving the dormant Iraqi pipeline across Saudi Arabia, still depends on political agreements that have repeatedly proved elusive.

 

The debate is therefore no longer about finding a single alternative to Hormuz. It is about creating redundancy. A network of export routes would allow crude flows to be redirected when one corridor is disrupted, making the system more resilient even if no individual pipeline can match the capacity of the strait.

 

Building that resilience will not be cheap. New pipelines require years of construction and tens of billions of dollars in investment. They must cross inhospitable terrain and, in many cases, multiple national borders where disputes over ownership, tariffs and operations have derailed projects before they began. There is a reason the Gulf has relatively limited integrated energy infrastructure.

 

Yet the economic calculation is shifting. Every disruption pushes insurance costs higher, unsettles global markets and reminds exporters that excessive concentration carries its own price. The question is no longer whether bypass routes are expensive. It is whether dependence on Hormuz has become even more costly.

 

The debate is no longer about whether the Strait of Hormuz can be disrupted. It is about how quickly the global energy system can reduce its dependence on it. Every crisis strengthens the commercial and strategic case for alternative export routes, making investment in pipelines, ports and new shipping corridors easier to justify.

 

Geography gave Iran one of the world’s most powerful strategic advantages. But every attempt to wield that advantage accelerates the search for alternatives. In geopolitics, leverage is most valuable when it rarely needs to be used. Once it becomes a recurring threat, markets begin pricing in a future without it.

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By Amena Bakr, Head of Middle East & OPEC+ Insights, Kpler