Monday 17 / August / 2026
1 Reframing the Hormuz question
The Strait of Hormuz, situated between Oman and Iran, is one of the world’s most consequential maritime passages. It connects the Arabian Gulf with the Sea of Oman, the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the wider global trading system.
For decades, strategic discussion has tended to frame Hormuz principally as a vulnerability: how can oil and gas bypass it, how much alternative capacity exists outside it, and what routes could be developed if passage through the Strait were interrupted?
The recent war unleashed by the United States and Israel against Iran, and the disruption that followed, have given these questions new urgency. Before the war, Hormuz was open and functioning as the principal maritime artery of the Gulf. The crisis demonstrated both the extraordinary consequences of disruption and the limitations of treating bypass infrastructure as a substitute for the Strait.
This paper, therefore, reframes the question. It asks not simply how Hormuz can be bypassed, but how the economic system centred upon Hormuz can be made more resilient.
That distinction changes the analysis. Pipelines, ports, railways, storage facilities and logistics corridors remain important, but they become components of a larger network rather than substitutes competing to replace the Strait. The proposition advanced here is that the strategic future of Hormuz lies in transforming the concept of a vulnerable chokepoint into that of a protected, diversified and interconnected network.
2 Hormuz: From chokepoint to connector
Hormuz is commonly described through energy statistics. In the first half of 2025, approximately 20.9 million barrels per day of petroleum liquids passed through the Strait, while LNG flows averaged about 11.4 billion cubic feet per day. This represented roughly one-quarter of globally traded maritime oil and more than one-fifth of global LNG trade.
Those figures describe only part of Hormuz’s function. The Strait carries hydrocarbons outward, but it also carries food, machinery, vehicles, industrial inputs and manufactured goods inward. Petrochemicals, metals, fertilizers and increasingly diversified Gulf exports move in the opposite direction. Hormuz is consequently not merely an oil-export passage; it is a two-way commercial connector.
This distinction becomes more important as Gulf economies diversify. The strategic importance of Hormuz can no longer adequately be measured only in barrels of oil. The 2026 disruption has demonstrated how widely the consequences can spread, extending beyond energy into freight, insurance, fertilizers, food prices, inflation and public finances, with particularly serious consequences for vulnerable economies.
The appropriate strategic unit of analysis is therefore not the Strait alone, but the economic network that converges upon it.
3 Why Hormuz cannot be replaced
Alternative infrastructure can reduce exposure to disruption, but no presently credible combination of bypass routes can reproduce the scale, flexibility and commercial breadth of Hormuz.
Oil pipelines can redirect particular volumes. Railways can shift some merchandise trade. Alternative ports can provide additional gateways. Storage can absorb temporary shocks. None individually reproduces the integrated maritime system represented by Hormuz.
The 2026 crisis illustrates the scale of the problem. In August, Saudi Aramco President and CEO Amin Nasser estimated that more than 2.6 billion barrels of oil had effectively been lost from the global market since the outbreak of the war and that, even if Hormuz reopened immediately, rebuilding inventories could take approximately eighteen months.
This demonstrates an important distinction between buffers and flows. Strategic inventories can cushion disruption for a period; only functioning infrastructure can maintain sustained movement of energy and merchandise. The objective should therefore be neither dependent upon Hormuz nor the illusion that it can be replaced, but redundancy around an indispensable maritime artery.
This limitation was stated particularly starkly by Sheikh Nawaf Saud Al-Sabah, Deputy Chairman and CEO of Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, who observed during CERAWeek 2026 that “there is no alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.” His point is especially significant for Kuwait, which lacks an independent maritime export outlet outside the Gulf. The practical implication is not that alternative infrastructure is unnecessary, but that it should be understood as redundancy and resilience—not replacement.
Recent claims that the Strait could soon become strategically “irrelevant” require much more careful scrutiny. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has argued that within roughly two years the Strait could become “just another body of water,” with 50–70 per cent of the energy now moving through it redirected through underground pipelines. The proposition confuses the ability to reroute some crude oil with the replacement of Hormuz as an energy and commercial system. The International Energy Agency reports that only Saudi Arabia and the UAE presently possess operational crude-oil bypass pipelines, with roughly 3.5–5.5 million barrels per day of available rerouting capacity. More decisively, it states that there are no alternative routes capable of bringing Qatar’s and the UAE’s LNG volumes to the global market outside their existing liquefaction-and-shipping system; those LNG flows alone account for almost one-fifth of global LNG trade. A pipeline forecast therefore cannot credibly make Hormuz irrelevant to energy, still less to the two-way merchandise trade that pipelines do not carry.
The widely cited Goldman Sachs estimate should likewise be treated as a conditional scenario rather than as demonstrated future capacity. Public reporting attributes to Goldman an estimate that more than 45 per cent of pre-war Gulf oil exports could gain bypass capacity by the end of 2027 and more than 60 per cent by the end of 2028, based on a portfolio of seven projects that includes infrastructure under construction, planned projects and possible revivals of older corridors. Such a figure is not equivalent to dependable operating throughput. It depends on projects being completed on schedule, feeder systems being able to supply them, pumping and storage capacity being available, terminals being able to load the volumes, cross-border political and security arrangements remaining reliable, and sufficient tanker and downstream logistics being in place. The IEA itself cautions that the logistics and supply chains required to reroute substantial Gulf flows have not been robustly tested.
The distinction is fundamental: gross or theoretical bypass capacity is not the same as net, dependable and market-usable substitution capacity. Even if the Goldman scenario were fully achieved for crude oil, it would still leave LNG, petroleum products, inward merchandise trade, fertilizers, food, machinery, vehicles and other commercial flows dependent on maritime connectivity through and around Hormuz. These projections are therefore useful as measures of possible redundancy; they do not substantiate the stronger claim that Hormuz can be engineered out of regional geography.
4 What the alternatives actually provide
Comparisons of alternative routes become misleading when operating infrastructure, projects under construction and speculative proposals are presented as though they represented equivalent capacity. Alternatives should therefore be classified consistently as operating infrastructure; committed or under-construction infrastructure; proposed projects; or conceptual possibilities.
4.1 Saudi Arabia — An Alternative Export Route
Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline provides access from the Kingdom’s eastern producing regions to the Red Sea. It represents substantial strategic infrastructure because it allows significant Saudi crude volumes to reach an alternative coast without transiting Hormuz. Its strategic function should nevertheless be defined accurately: it is principally a Saudi national export-diversification route, not a replacement for Hormuz as the Gulf’s wider commercial gateway.
4.2 UAE (Abu Dhabi–Fujairah) — A bypass asset
The UAE’s Abu Dhabi–Fujairah crude-oil pipeline terminates at Fujairah outside Hormuz and represents perhaps the clearest existing example of a dedicated bypass asset. The existing line has capacity of about 1.8 million barrels per day. ADNOC is constructing a second line of about 1.5 million barrels per day, expected to become operational in 2027, while Fujairah also provides major crude-storage capacity. This materially strengthens the UAE’s national resilience and demonstrates the value of investment in redundancy. Yet its function remains specific to particular crude flows: it cannot reproduce Hormuz’s LNG role, its wider petroleum-product movements or its two-way merchandise connectivity.
4.3 Iraq–Türkiye — An operating Mediterranean outlet
The Iraq–Türkiye pipeline to Ceyhan is fundamentally different from many proposed alternatives because it constitutes established infrastructure linking northern Iraq to the Mediterranean. Its strategic relevance lies in giving Iraq access to a second maritime geography, although actual flows, infrastructure condition, political arrangements and the much longer onward voyage to Asian markets remain important when comparing nominal capacity with dependable operating capacity. It is an important Iraqi national diversification mechanism rather than a substitute for Hormuz for the Gulf system as a whole.
4.4 Iraq–Syria — The Kirkuk–Baniyas Possibility
Iraq is also developing the Basra–Haditha corridor, on which work began in 2026 with a planned capacity of about 2.5 million barrels per day. This is strategically important because it could connect southern production toward possible western or northern outlets. But Haditha is an internal junction, not itself a seaborne export terminal: onward access toward Ceyhan, Baniyas or Aqaba would require additional infrastructure, cross-border agreements, financing, security and terminal capacity. The historic Kirkuk–Baniyas line remains a separate rehabilitation possibility; it has been out of operation after serious damage. These projects strengthen Iraq’s diversification options, but their announced design capacities should not be counted as immediately available Hormuz-bypass capacity.
4.5 Yemen and the Red Sea
Geography suggests possible corridors through Yemen toward the Arabian Sea or Red Sea, but geography alone does not make viable infrastructure. Yemen’s fragmented political authority, damaged infrastructure and persistent security problems make a large-scale dependable transit corridor unrealistic in the foreseeable future. Any theoretical savings from bypassing Hormuz must also be weighed against construction, security and continuing operating costs.
4.6 Pakistan–India Land Connections
Pakistan and India are major Asian energy markets, but land-based connections from the Arabian Gulf toward South Asia face a basic geographic complication. Routes would normally have to cross or involve Iran, potentially reintroducing the geopolitical dependence that a Hormuz bypass is intended to reduce. They would also require cross-border agreements, rights-of-way, pumping and storage infrastructure, and dependable security across several jurisdictions. Such connections may have value as longer-term regional integration projects, but they cannot presently be treated as independent substitutes for Hormuz.
4.7 Deep-Water Undersea Pipelines
Deep-water pipelines should not be dismissed as technically impossible. The proposed Middle East–India Deepwater Pipeline (MEIDP), designed to carry gas from Oman to India at depths approaching 3,450 metres, shows that advances in offshore engineering make such connections increasingly feasible. They nevertheless remain exceptionally demanding: long distances, difficult seabed and seismic conditions, high capital cost, and specialised inspection and repair requirements.
Their more fundamental limitation is strategic. A subsea pipeline is a fixed point-to-point system carrying a particular commodity; it lacks the destination flexibility of shipping and cannot reproduce Hormuz’s simultaneous movement of crude oil, LNG, petroleum products and two-way merchandise trade. Deep-water pipelines may therefore add valuable redundancy for selected energy flows, but they cannot substitute for the Strait. Technical feasibility does not establish strategic substitutability.
4.8 What the Alternatives Tell Us
The pattern is consistent. Saudi Arabia and the UAE possess valuable working alternatives, but neither replicates the full function of Hormuz. Iraqi corridors primarily diversify Iraq’s own exports. Yemen is not presently feasible. Pakistan–India land routes encounter Iranian transit and cross-border dependencies, while deep-water pipelines, although technically conceivable, remain fixed, commodity-specific and capital-intensive. Diversification can reduce concentration risk; it does not eliminate geographic dependence. The proper test is not whether an asset can bypass the Strait for one flow, but whether it can reproduce the scale, flexibility and two-way commercial connectivity that Hormuz provides.
5 From route diversification to network resilience
The traditional approach asks which route can replace Hormuz. A more useful question is: how many independent connections can remain functional when one component of the system is disrupted? That moves strategic planning from route diversification to network resilience.
A resilient network combines maritime routes, pipelines, ports, railways, storage, refining, LNG facilities, digital logistics and, increasingly, future hydrogen and ammonia supply chains. Its strength depends not merely on how many alternatives exist but on their capacity, reliability, independence and interoperability.
LNG exposes the limits of an oil-pipeline-centred bypass strategy particularly clearly. Qatar’s LNG exports depend on large, location-specific liquefaction, storage and loading complexes and specialised carriers; the IEA states that there is presently no alternative route capable of bringing Qatari and Emirati LNG volumes to the global market. Reproducing such an export system outside the Gulf would require not merely a pipeline but an entire parallel industrial chain. Geography also matters after a bypass is reached: Mediterranean or Red Sea outlets may diversify origin risk, but for cargoes whose principal customers are in Asia they can lengthen voyages, add handling and transport costs, and in some cases introduce exposure to other strategic passages such as Bab el-Mandeb or Suez. Diversification can therefore reduce concentration risk while simultaneously creating new costs and vulnerabilities.
Diversification can merely relocate vulnerability. A pipeline bypassing Hormuz but terminating at another exposed location may redistribute rather than eliminate risk. A corridor traversing unstable jurisdictions may exchange maritime risk for geopolitical risk on land. Redirecting trade through another narrow maritime passage may create a new concentration of risk while adding substantial capital and operating costs. The purpose of resilience is therefore to create a network in which the failure of any one component does not disable the whole.
Network resilience also depends on the less visible infrastructure of maritime commerce: safe navigation, functioning ports, insurance and finance, search and rescue, environmental response, emergency communications and incident notification. Technology can strengthen this system through AI, digital twins and satellite monitoring, while greater digitisation also creates cyber risks that must be managed.
6 Oman — A geographic-economic ecosystem
Oman’s greatest strategic contribution may not be any single pipeline, railway or port. It is geography itself.
Unlike states whose diversification strategies principally involve constructing a bypass around a particular chokepoint, Oman possesses optionality across several interconnected maritime geographies: Hormuz, the Sea of Oman, the Arabian Sea and the wider Indian Ocean. Through its historical and commercial connections with East Africa, that geography can potentially reach still farther toward African continental corridors and ultimately the Atlantic.
This produces an important strategic distinction: the UAE has developed a bypass asset; Saudi Arabia has developed an alternative export route; Oman possesses a connectivity geography.
Oman’s ports should consequently not be viewed as a list of separate facilities. They constitute a geographic-economic ecosystem.
Khasab anchors Oman directly on the Strait of Hormuz and gives the Sultanate a physical presence at one of the world’s most important maritime passages. Its potential extends beyond conventional port operations. Its location gives Khasab scope to develop a stronger marine-services role for vessels transiting Hormuz, complementing Oman’s responsibilities and opportunities as one of the Strait’s two littoral states.
Sohar combines industrial, maritime and increasingly rail connectivity. Hafeet Rail substantially strengthens this position. The project’s official description provides for a 238-kilometre railway from Sohar Port into the UAE national rail network toward Abu Dhabi. Sohar can therefore become a significant land-maritime interface linking Oman’s ocean-facing geography with the economic centres of the UAE.
Suwaiq adds another node along the Batinah coast, contributing flexibility and redundancy within Oman’s northern maritime network. Muscat/Sultan Qaboos occupies a central position on the Sea of Oman; although the commercial role of Port Sultan Qaboos has evolved, Muscat remains geographically important within the chain connecting northern Oman with the Arabian Sea.
Duqm provides deep-water access directly to the Arabian Sea, extensive land for industrial and logistics development, and substantial distance from the immediate concentration of risk around Hormuz. Its port, industrial zone, refinery and future-energy potential give it a particularly important role.
Salalah provides the southern anchor. As one of the world’s major container transshipment ports, positioned close to the principal East-West shipping routes of the Indian Ocean, it connects Oman naturally with Asia, East Africa, the Red Sea approaches and wider global shipping networks.
Taken together, Khasab, Sohar, Suwaiq, Muscat/Sultan Qaboos, Duqm and Salalah form a geographic-economic ecosystem extending from Hormuz through the Sea of Oman and Arabian Sea into the Indian Ocean, combining maritime access with industrial, logistics, rail and future-energy capabilities.
The western Indian Ocean also opens Oman’s strategic horizon toward East Africa. African infrastructure such as the TAZARA Railway and Lobito Corridor illustrates the potential for Indian Ocean maritime access to connect with continental African transport networks and, ultimately, Atlantic-facing trade routes. This does not mean that Oman itself possesses or controls those corridors. It means that its maritime geography gives it potential to become an interconnector between Gulf, Asian, East African and wider African logistics systems.
7 Asia and the eastward reorientation of Hormuz
Perhaps the most consequential transformation in the strategic geography of Hormuz is the movement of its economic centre of gravity eastward.
The US Energy Information Administration estimates that in the first half of 2025 approximately 89 per cent of crude oil and condensate passing through Hormuz went to Asian markets. China, India, Japan and South Korea together accounted for approximately 74 per cent of those flows. This is more than an energy statistic; it changes the geopolitical geometry of Hormuz.
The traditional conceptual map was broadly Gulf West. The emerging economic reality is increasingly Gulf Asia. The double arrow is crucial. Asian economies import Gulf energy, while Gulf economies import Asian machinery, technology, vehicles, electronics, industrial equipment and manufactured goods. The relationship is therefore not simply one of producers supplying consumers, but an increasingly integrated two-way commercial system.
That leads to a strategic question: if Asia bears an increasing share of the economic consequences of disruption in Hormuz, should Asia also bear an increasing share of the investment required for Hormuz resilience? Such participation need not be conceived primarily in military terms. It could be economic and infrastructural: investment in ports, strategic storage, refining, LNG, rail and logistics systems, digital trade infrastructure, industrial zones, hydrogen, ammonia and other future-energy networks.
Major Asian economies would thereby move from being predominantly customers of Gulf hydrocarbons toward becoming stakeholders in Gulf-Asian connectivity resilience. Infrastructure whose benefits extend simultaneously to Gulf producers and Asian consumers need not necessarily be financed by the country in which the physical asset happens to be located.
8 Iran — inclusion without dependence
No durable architecture for Hormuz can ignore Iran. Iran is, together with Oman, one of the Strait’s two littoral states. Its Gulf and Sea of Oman coastline and its geographical position make it an unavoidable participant in any durable regional system.
Diversification should therefore not become a disguised policy of containment. An infrastructure architecture deliberately designed around Iran’s permanent exclusion could reinforce geopolitical division rather than resilience. But inclusion is not the same as dependence.
Interdependence does not automatically create security. Where infrastructure becomes excessively concentrated, interdependence itself can create coercive leverage. The more sophisticated principle is therefore inclusion without dependence.
Iran should have opportunities to participate in regional trade, energy and connectivity arrangements, while the wider system should contain sufficient independent routes, ports, storage and infrastructure to ensure that no single participant can disable it. The principle should apply equally to every participating state, not only Iran.
This approach rejects two potentially dangerous extremes: exclusion that turns diversification into containment, and dependence that allows interconnection to become strategic vulnerability. The objective is resilient interdependence.
9 The economics of resilience
Redundancy is expensive. Pipelines require substantial capital. Ports require terminals, storage and hinterland connections. Railways require cross-border coordination and sufficient freight. Strategic inventories immobilize capital. Spare capacity may appear commercially inefficient during periods of stability.
But resilience should not be evaluated only against the cost of normal operations. Its relevant comparator is the economic cost of systemic disruption. The 2026 experience has provided an unusually powerful demonstration, while UNCTAD’s analysis shows how the effects propagate beyond oil through freight, insurance, fertilizer, food prices, inflation, financial conditions and government budgets.
Infrastructure that appears redundant in normal times can therefore possess substantial strategic option value. A pipeline operating below maximum capacity may still be economically valuable if its availability prevents catastrophic losses during a crisis. The same applies to spare port capacity, storage and alternative railway connections.
This suggests a broader approach to project appraisal. Resilience infrastructure should be evaluated not solely according to its normal commercial utilization but also according to the economic losses it can prevent during disruption. Where the benefits accrue to Gulf producers, Asian consumers and the wider global economy, the costs of resilience need not fall exclusively on Gulf governments.
10 The Hormuz Connectivity Doctrine — principles and implementation, 2026–2035
The Hormuz Connectivity Doctrine is based not on defending dependence upon Hormuz, nor on attempting to engineer Hormuz out of regional geography, but on building sufficient connectivity around it that disruption of one component does not paralyse the whole. In practical terms, the doctrine seeks to keep Hormuz open while building enough independent connections around it to prevent disruption at one point from becoming a systemic economic crisis.
First, protect the Strait and preserve freedom of navigation while strengthening the infrastructure that reduces the consequences of temporary disruption. This requires more than naval security alone: dependable navigation, search and rescue, emergency communications, environmental response, functioning insurance and finance, and agreed mechanisms for rapid incident notification should form part of a standing regional resilience architecture. The objective is to prevent a local incident from escalating into a prolonged interruption of global trade.
Second, multiply independent connections through pipelines, ports, railways, storage, refining and logistics rather than searching for a single substitute for Hormuz. Redundancy should be deliberately diversified across modes and geography so that the failure of one route does not disable the system as a whole. Existing infrastructure should be used more effectively before costly new corridors are built, and every major investment should be tested against capacity, cost, security, commercial utility and the resilience it provides in an emergency. Diversification reduces concentration risk; it does not eliminate geographic dependence. Technical feasibility does not establish strategic substitutability: a project should be credited for the flows it can reliably divert, not treated as a replacement for the wider system it cannot reproduce.
Third, develop Oman’s geographic-economic ecosystem as an integrated network extending from Hormuz through the Sea of Oman and Arabian Sea into the Indian Ocean and toward East Africa. Khasab, Sohar, Suwaiq, Muscat/Sultan Qaboos, Duqm and Salalah should be planned as complementary nodes linked to industrial zones, storage, road and rail networks and international shipping routes. Hafeet Rail strengthens the northern land connection, while Salalah’s position on East-West shipping lanes and links toward East Africa give the network a wider Indian Ocean dimension.
Fourth, recognize Asia as both a major stakeholder and a potential investor in the resilience of Gulf-Asian trade and energy connectivity. Asian economies are not merely purchasers of Gulf hydrocarbons: they are also major suppliers of manufactured goods, machinery, vehicles, technology and investment to the Gulf. Their direct interest in continuity therefore justifies deeper participation in strategic storage, refining, LNG facilities, ports, logistics, digital infrastructure and future-energy projects, turning dependence into shared investment in resilience.
Fifth, include Iran in regional connectivity while ensuring that neither Iran nor any other single participant can acquire disabling leverage over the wider network. Iran is one of the Strait’s two littoral states and cannot realistically be engineered out of Hormuz’s geography. Commercial inclusion, communication and practical cooperation can create incentives for stability, but the network should remain sufficiently diversified that no state, route or facility becomes indispensable enough to hold the wider system hostage.
Sixth, evaluate resilience infrastructure partly according to the economic losses it can prevent during disruption, rather than solely according to normal commercial utilization. A pipeline, storage terminal, railway or reserve facility may appear underused in normal conditions yet possess substantial strategic value if it prevents even a fraction of the losses caused by a prolonged interruption. Project appraisal should therefore incorporate an explicit resilience value alongside conventional financial returns, while still demanding technical feasibility, disciplined cost control and useful commercial application in normal times.
Implementation between 2026 and 2035 should follow these principles pragmatically. Existing Saudi, UAE, Omani and Iraqi infrastructure should be assessed according to dependable operating capacity rather than theoretical maximum capacity, and projects should be consistently classified as operating, committed or under construction, proposed, or conceptual.
Cross-border connectivity should receive particular attention. Hafeet Rail illustrates how a port becomes strategically more valuable when its hinterland extends across national boundaries. Similar opportunities may arise through railways, roads, pipelines, electricity networks, storage and digital logistics.
Oman could increasingly plan Khasab, Sohar, Suwaiq, Muscat/Sultan Qaboos, Duqm and Salalah as complementary parts of one national connectivity ecosystem rather than as isolated facilities. Gulf and Asian economies could, meanwhile, establish structured mechanisms for co-investment in strategic storage, refining, LNG, ports, logistics and future-energy infrastructure.
The doctrine would thus replace the false choice between dependence and bypass with the more durable objective of resilient interdependence.
11 Conclusion — from vulnerability to resilient interdependence
The debate surrounding Hormuz has too often been framed as a search for escape routes. Saudi Arabia’s western infrastructure provides substantial national redundancy. The UAE’s Abu Dhabi–Fujairah connection provides a significant bypass capability. Iraq’s northern outlet through Türkiye and potentially its western connection through Syria provide diversification opportunities. Other concepts may eventually add further options.
But the alternatives do not collectively eliminate the strategic importance of Hormuz. They demonstrate something more useful: resilience comes from networks.
Oman’s geography provides an unusually important foundation for such a network. Asia’s growing dependence on Gulf energy—and the Gulf’s growing integration with Asian production and trade—provides its economic logic. Iran’s unavoidable geography requires inclusion, while the dangers of concentrated dependence require redundancy.
Hormuz should therefore ultimately be viewed not simply as a chokepoint to be avoided, but as the principal maritime connector between the Arabian Gulf and the global economy. The strategic objective should not be to make Hormuz irrelevant. It should be to make disruption of Hormuz progressively less capable of disrupting the economic system built around it.
The strategic future of Hormuz lies neither in dependence nor avoidance. It lies in transforming a chokepoint into a network: protecting the Strait, multiplying the connections around it, and making the prosperity created by its openness greater than the leverage created by its disruption.
Selected Sources
1. Central Omani government sources — Khasab, Sohar, Suwaiq, Muscat/Sultan Qaboos, Duqm and Salalah: ports, logistics and connectivity.
2. Dr. Harith Ghassani, prominent Omani anthropologist and geopolitical author — TAZARA Railway and Lobito Corridor.
3. U.S. EIA, World Oil Transit Chokepoints, 3 March 2026.
4. UNCTAD, Strait of Hormuz disruption assessments and Trade and Development Foresights 2026.
5. ADNOC, Dr. Sultan Al Jaber on investment, resilience and freedom of navigation, 20 May 2026.
6. ADNOC, Executive Committee of ADNOC Board of Directors, 15 May 2026.
7. Reuters, Aramco on 2.6 billion barrels lost from global market, 4 August 2026.
8. Reuters, IEA warning on global energy security and Hormuz, 17 July 2026.
9. UK House of Commons Library, Syria one year after Assad, 22 January 2026.
10. Sheikh Nawaf Saud Al-Sabah, KPC Deputy Chairman and CEO — interview remarks quoted in text.
11. Hafeet Rail — official UAE-Oman railway project information.
12. U.S. EIA, 2026 Saudi East-West and UAE Fujairah pipeline/bypass assessments.
13. Reuters, 2026 Iraq-Türkiye and Iraq-Syria/Baniyas pipeline reporting.
14. Reuters, Scott Bessent claim on future Hormuz relevance, 10 August 2026.
15. IEA, Strait of Hormuz, 2026 — bypass capacity, Gulf dependence and LNG constraints.
16. Reuters, Goldman Sachs Hormuz-bypass projections and assumptions, 12 July 2026.
17. U.S. EIA, United Arab Emirates Country Analysis, 28 July 2026 — Fujairah pipelines and storage.
18. Reuters, Basra-Haditha oil pipeline, 1 May 2026.
19. Associated Press, Gulf plans to bypass Hormuz, July 2026.
20. DNV, Submarine Pipeline Systems (DNV-ST-F101 and related practices).
21. SPE, Journal of Petroleum Technology, Middle East-India Deepwater Pipeline feasibility study, 1 May 2022.
22. IEA, The Middle East and Global Energy Markets, 2026 — LNG and Asian-market dependence.
23. Reuters, Alternative routes for Middle East oil and gas, 21 April 2026.
* The author is an Omani Economist, Banker & former Senior Civil Servant
