What Alternatives Do Gulf States Have to the Strait of Hormuz?

Why It Matters

The bottleneck forces Gulf exporters to curtail shipments, tightening global oil and gas supplies and heightening price volatility. It also underscores the strategic risk of over‑reliance on a single maritime chokepoint for energy security.

Key Takeaways

• Hormuz handles ~20 million barrels daily, plus 20% LNG exports.
• Saudi Petroline and UAE Adcop together provide under 7 million barrels capacity.
• Iranian drone strikes have repeatedly knocked offline 0.7 million barrels/day on Petroline.
• Iraq and Kuwait lack viable pipeline alternatives, forcing force majeure.
• New bypass pipelines cost hundreds of billions and need a decade.

Pulse Analysis

The prolonged shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz has exposed a structural weakness in Gulf energy logistics. While the East‑West Petroline in Saudi Arabia and the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline (Adcop) in the UAE were designed as emergency routes, their combined capacity of under 7 million barrels per day covers only a fraction of the 20‑plus million barrels normally transiting the strait. Moreover, both corridors have proven vulnerable to Iranian drone strikes, demonstrating that physical redundancy alone does not guarantee resilience when adversaries can target critical nodes.

For Iraq and Kuwait, the situation is more acute. Iraq’s historic reliance on the Basra‑Hormuz corridor leaves it with a modest 250,000‑barrel‑per‑day flow through the reopened Kirkuk‑Ceyhan pipeline, while Kuwait has no alternative export route at all, prompting force‑majeure declarations that could linger for months. Qatar’s challenge differs: its massive LNG output at Ras Laffan still depends on tanker traffic through Hormuz, meaning any prolonged closure directly curtails a fifth of global LNG supply, amplifying market tightness and price spikes.

Looking ahead, the prospect of constructing new bypass pipelines is fraught with economic and security hurdles. Estimates run into hundreds of billions of dollars and a decade of construction, yet even completed infrastructure would remain exposed to the same drone threats that have already disrupted existing lines. Policymakers therefore face a choice between massive capital investment in new physical routes and accelerating diversification through strategic reserves, demand‑side management, and alternative shipping corridors that reduce the chokepoint’s systemic risk.