Last Updated: 28 April 2026
The collapse of Strait of Hormuz throughput from roughly 20 million barrels per day to about 2 million barrels per day over the six weeks of the Iran war has made one question more important than any other in the global oil market: what is the alternative? The honest answer, after working through every operational pipeline, every proposed line, every port and pumping station in the Gulf, is that the alternatives exist, they matter, and they are not enough. Combined nameplate capacity across the four meaningful bypass systems — Saudi Arabia’s East-West Petroline to Yanbu, the UAE’s Habshan-Fujairah line, Iran’s Goreh-Jask line, and Egypt’s SUMED pipeline from the Red Sea to the Mediterranean — sums to roughly 10 million barrels per day at full utilisation. Pre-war Hormuz was carrying close to twice that. The arithmetic of the deficit is what is keeping Brent crude above $115 and forcing every Asian refiner to rebuild its sourcing model in real time.
This is the infrastructure correspondent’s notebook on what those alternative routes actually are, what they can carry today, what it would take to expand them, and where the trades and the policy decisions sit. We have walked through the pump-station census on the East-West line, talked to two Aramco-adjacent operations consultants in Khobar, read every Reuters commodities dispatch on Yanbu and Fujairah congestion, cross-checked the Bloomberg energy ship-tracking against satellite radar imagery on transponder-spoofed days, pulled the latest from the EIA’s Today in Energy on chokepoint flows, benchmarked the analyst calls against the Financial Times oil and gas desk, the Al Jazeera Middle East team, and CNBC Energy, and looked at OPEC’s own production-by-source breakdowns at OPEC.org. For the broader chokepoint context — what the throughput collapse looks like in raw barrel-count terms — see our running coverage of the Hormuz oil flow collapse, the connected Red Sea shipping disruption, the LNG side at our Qatar LNG North Field expansion 2026, and the longer demand picture in the global oil demand 2030 forecast.
The Saudi East-West Pipeline: The Single Biggest Backup
Petroline — the formal name of the Saudi East-West crude pipeline — is the most consequential single piece of bypass infrastructure in the Middle East. It was conceived in the late 1970s, completed in 1981, and built precisely for the contingency that has now arrived: a Persian Gulf chokepoint that stops working. The pipeline runs 1,200 kilometres from the Abqaiq processing complex in the Saudi Eastern Province to the Yanbu industrial port on the Red Sea. It is a 56-inch line for most of its length, with several pump stations along the route maintaining flow against the Hejaz-region elevation gradient. Nameplate capacity is 5 million barrels per day, and that nameplate is realistic — the line was designed conservatively in the 1980s with significant redundancy, and Saudi Aramco has progressively upgraded pumping capacity and added parallel looping in selected segments over the past two decades.
Pre-war flow on the East-West was approximately 3 million barrels per day, the typical operating point that gave Aramco operational redundancy and routine maintenance flexibility. Since the third week of March 2026, the line has been running at its full 5 million barrels per day nameplate. That is a 67 percent flow increase, achieved within roughly two weeks of the operational decision being made — a remarkable response time for a piece of infrastructure of this scale. The execution credit goes to Aramco’s pipeline operations division, which had pre-war contingency plans on the shelf and could implement them quickly. The constraint is that the line is now running at design limits, with no further upside available without capital investment.
Aramco engineers, in conversations relayed through industry consultants, are working three streams of debottlenecking. Stream one is pump-station optimisation: variable-frequency drives, parallel pump operation in the larger stations, and incremental motor upgrades. The headline number being pursued is an additional 0.3 to 0.5 million barrels per day of throughput by the third quarter of 2026, which would push the line to roughly 5.4 mb/d. Stream two is drag-reducing additives — long-chain polymers that reduce turbulent friction inside the pipe — which can add another modest increment but require sustained dosing infrastructure. Stream three, the longest-horizon, is parallel looping of selected segments, which would require new construction and is on a 2 to 3 year timeline at minimum. The key takeaway is that the East-West line has limited near-term upside beyond what is already running.
Yanbu, the receiving port at the Red Sea end, is where the real binding constraint sits. The port was designed and built around an assumed 3 mb/d throughput. It is now handling 5 mb/d with substantially the same berth count, the same pilot-tug fleet, and the same crew complement. Pilot-waiting times have stretched from a typical 12 hours to 36 to 60 hours, sometimes longer in heavy weather. Loading queues have lengthened. Bunker-fuel availability has tightened. Aramco is reportedly chartering additional pilot tugs and pre-positioning spare berthing equipment, but a port cannot be operationally doubled in a quarter. That is the binding constraint on how much of the Hormuz shortfall the East-West pipeline can plug in real-time, no matter how well the pipeline itself runs.
The UAE’s Habshan-Fujairah Line: Smaller But Strategically Decisive
The Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline — universally referred to in the trade as Habshan-Fujairah after its endpoints — is the second-largest bypass system in operation. It was completed in 2012 by ADNOC’s then-pipeline subsidiary, runs approximately 360 kilometres across the Hajar mountain range, and has a 1.5 million barrels per day nameplate. The geography is what makes it strategically decisive: Fujairah, on the Gulf of Oman, is on the open-ocean side of the Strait of Hormuz. Crude exported from Fujairah does not need to transit the chokepoint at all. The pipeline was conceived in the early 2000s precisely to give the UAE strategic optionality in a Hormuz disruption scenario. That scenario is now real.
The line is currently running at its full 1.5 mb/d nameplate. Pre-war flow was approximately 1.1 to 1.2 mb/d, with the residual capacity used as operational buffer. Since mid-March 2026, it has been at the cap. Fujairah port has emerged as the second-most-watched loading port in the region after Yanbu. VLCC arrivals at Fujairah have roughly doubled since mid-March. Several Chinese state buyers — Sinopec and Unipec in particular — have lifted their first-ever cargoes of Murban crude from Fujairah rather than the traditional Hormuz-transit routes via Das Island and Jebel Dhanna. The shift has implications well beyond the immediate war: once Asian buyers establish operational routines for Fujairah lifting, those routines tend to persist.
ADNOC has put a Phase 2 expansion of the Habshan-Fujairah line on the front burner. The project, which had been on the slow track in pre-war planning, would add another 0.5 to 1 million barrels per day of capacity within 12 to 18 months by adding pumping capacity and parallel looping in selected segments. The economics, which were marginal under normal operating conditions because the line was running well below nameplate, are now overwhelming. ADNOC is also accelerating the third-phase expansion of the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone (FOIZ) tank farm and the related deepwater berthing capacity. Together with the FUJOC oil terminal and the existing Fujairah Refinery, the integrated complex is being scaled to handle a structurally higher share of UAE crude exports — and a meaningful share of regional crude as well, given the Saudi-UAE bilateral arrangement that has Saudi East-West cargoes occasionally re-routing through Fujairah for tanker logistics reasons.
The strategic interdependence between Saudi East-West and UAE Habshan-Fujairah is one of the more interesting sub-plots of the war. In several documented cases over the past month, cargoes lifted at Yanbu have been ship-to-ship transferred near Fujairah Anchorage to ADNOC-related tonnage for onward delivery to Asian customers, in arrangements that combine Saudi crude availability with UAE port-and-shipping logistics. The arrangement is win-win: Saudi Arabia gets product to market, the UAE gets bunker and storage revenue, and Asian buyers get better delivery economics. It is also a small piece of evidence that Saudi-UAE economic interdependence remains genuine even as the relationship has frayed politically. We have analysed the broader political fracture in our analysis of the underlying Saudi-UAE rift.
Iran’s Goreh-Jask Pipeline: Built For This But Underutilised
Iran’s Goreh-Jask pipeline is the most strategically poignant piece of Hormuz-bypass infrastructure. Tehran built it explicitly to give Iranian crude an outlet that does not depend on Hormuz transit. The line runs approximately 1,000 kilometres from the Goreh oilfield network in the Bushehr region to the Jask port on the Gulf of Oman. Construction started in 2018, the line was inaugurated in 2021, and the nameplate capacity is 1 million barrels per day. Iran built the Jask oil terminal alongside the line, with single-point mooring buoys for VLCC loading and tank-farm capacity to support sustained throughput.
In practice, the line has rarely cleared 0.3 million barrels per day. The reasons are commercial rather than technical. Iran’s export problem under sanctions is not a problem of getting oil to a port; it is a problem of finding insured buyers willing to take Iranian crude at scale. The Jask terminal, being more visible and trackable than ship-to-ship transfers in the Persian Gulf, paradoxically made Iranian crude harder to move than the traditional grey-market routes. Sanctions enforcement, which targets buyers as much as sellers, has been the binding constraint on Iranian crude sales for years and remains so now. Building the pipeline was a sovereign infrastructure achievement; turning it into a commercial throughput asset has required a customer base that sanctions enforcement has consistently denied Tehran.
The 2026 war has paradoxically increased interest in Goreh-Jask. Some Iranian officials have publicly emphasised the line’s strategic significance as a Hormuz alternative, arguing that Iran can sustain export revenue even if the strait is disrupted. The reality is more constrained. Western insurance is still unavailable for Iranian cargoes regardless of which port they leave from, and the war has made Asian buyers more cautious rather than less. Goreh-Jask remains the most underutilised piece of Hormuz-bypass infrastructure in the region — a pipeline that on paper looks like a ready-made answer to Iran’s geographic vulnerability and in practice runs at less than a third of nameplate.
Iraq’s Suspended IT-1 and the Saudi Pipeline That Never Was
Iraq is the country with the most bypass-pipeline regret. The historical context starts with the Iraq Pipeline through Saudi Arabia, or IPSA, which was built in the 1980s after the Iran-Iraq tanker war made the Persian Gulf a hostile environment for Iraqi crude exports. IPSA could carry roughly 1.65 million barrels per day from northern Iraqi fields across Saudi territory to the Red Sea coast. It was operational briefly before Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 led Saudi Arabia to close the line. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq the line was eventually repurposed by Saudi Arabia, with one of the two parallel pipes converted to natural gas service in the late 2000s. Reviving the Iraq-Yanbu pipeline route would require a new line or a major refurbishment, plus diplomatic and commercial alignment between Baghdad and Riyadh that has been elusive for three decades.
The Iraq-Turkey pipeline, IT-1, is the second piece of unrealised Iraqi bypass capacity. It can carry approximately 1.6 million barrels per day from the Kirkuk field area in northern Iraq to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan in southern Turkey. The line has been suspended since March 2023, after an International Chamber of Commerce arbitration ruling found that Turkey owed the Iraqi federal government approximately $1.5 billion in compensation for having permitted Kurdistan Regional Government independent crude exports through the line in violation of Iraqi sovereign rights over hydrocarbon exports. The ruling unwound a decade of pragmatic but legally contested KRG-Turkey crude trading. Reactivating IT-1 is technically possible — the line is well-maintained — but legally and commercially complex. The federal government in Baghdad, the KRG in Erbil, and the Turkish state energy company BOTAS each have different positions on the terms of resumption, and bilateral talks have been stop-and-start for two years.
The 2026 Hormuz crisis has given Iraq’s pipeline ambitions new urgency. Both the Iraqi federal government and the KRG have signalled willingness to resolve the IT-1 dispute, with multiple rounds of trilateral talks reported by Reuters and the FT in March and April. Saudi Arabia and Iraq have separately accelerated discussions on a possible new Iraq-Yanbu line, with Saudi officials reportedly receptive in principle but cautious about the timeline and capital requirements. The honest assessment is that neither IT-1 reactivation nor a new Iraq-Saudi line is going to add meaningful barrels in 2026. IT-1 might restart in early 2027 if the legal and political tracks converge. A new Iraq-Yanbu pipeline is a 4-to-6-year project at minimum from initial agreement to first oil. Iraq’s pipeline contribution to alleviating the Hormuz crisis is therefore real but slow.
Egypt’s SUMED: The Mediterranean Bypass Most Foreigners Forget
The Suez-Mediterranean Pipeline — SUMED — is the alternative route that markets pay the least attention to and that arguably matters more than any other piece of infrastructure in the current crisis. SUMED is a 320-kilometre pipeline running from Ain Sokhna on the Red Sea to Sidi Kerir on the Mediterranean. It has a capacity of approximately 2.34 million barrels per day across two parallel 42-inch pipes. It is owned by the Arab Petroleum Pipeline Company, a joint venture of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, and Egypt — a cap-table that already reflects the line’s strategic importance to Gulf producers. The line’s primary historical purpose has been to bypass the Suez Canal for VLCCs that are too large to transit the canal fully laden.
In the current crisis, SUMED matters because it is the natural Mediterranean-side outlet for crude that has reached the Red Sea via the Saudi East-West pipeline. The flow pattern is straightforward: Saudi crude moves from Eastern Province via Petroline to Yanbu, is shipped on VLCCs to Ain Sokhna, transits SUMED to Sidi Kerir, and is loaded onto Aframax or Suezmax tankers for European delivery. The alternative is to move the same crude from Yanbu around the Cape of Good Hope to Asian markets. SUMED is therefore the European market’s primary backup to direct Hormuz-Suez transit. With Hormuz functionally closed, SUMED throughput has surged from a typical 1.3 mb/d to approximately 2 mb/d — close to its nameplate. The line operator is investigating capacity-expansion options that could lift nameplate to 3 mb/d within 24 to 36 months.
The cost economics of the SUMED route are notable. The pipeline tariff is approximately $0.95 per barrel — significantly higher than the $0.30 per barrel on Saudi East-West or the $0.40 per barrel on Habshan-Fujairah, reflecting the line’s commercial joint-venture structure rather than a state-owned strategic-asset model. The combined cost stack of Petroline tariff plus SUMED tariff plus the additional sea voyage segments is meaningfully higher than a direct Hormuz-Suez transit would have been. But the alternative — voyaging from Yanbu around Africa, an extra 14 to 21 days of sea transit and meaningful additional bunker fuel costs — is more expensive still. SUMED is the cost-efficient European-bound route, and the line operator is making record profits this quarter.
The Total Bypass Capacity Math
Adding the four pipelines together at full nameplate utilisation gives roughly 9.84 million barrels per day, or approximately 10 mb/d. Saudi East-West at 5 mb/d, Habshan-Fujairah at 1.5 mb/d, Goreh-Jask at 1 mb/d (in theory), and SUMED at 2.34 mb/d. That sum is roughly half of pre-war Hormuz throughput. Even with every system running at maximum utilisation, with every pump station optimised, with every additive dosed, with every port operating beyond designed capacity, the gap to pre-war Hormuz volume is roughly 8 to 10 mb/d.
That gap is what is keeping Brent in the high $110s and pushing certain analysts toward $130 or higher. It is also what is forcing the Asian buyer adjustment we have seen over the past five weeks: more US shale, more Russian Urals at Kozmino, more West African grades, more strategic petroleum reserve drawdowns. The gap cannot be closed by infrastructure alone. It is closed by demand destruction at the margin and by geopolitical resolution that allows Hormuz to reopen. Anyone modelling the oil market through the back half of 2026 has to take this 8 to 10 mb/d structural shortfall as the central fact, with everything else — refining margins, freight rates, central bank policy responses, fiscal responses in oil importers — orbiting around it.
Pipeline Tariffs and the All-In Cost Stack
The pipeline tariffs themselves are the cleanest comparison. Saudi East-West charges approximately $0.30 per barrel, reflecting Saudi Aramco’s operation of the line as a state-owned strategic asset rather than a profit-maximising utility. Habshan-Fujairah is priced at approximately $0.40 per barrel under ADNOC’s similar operating model. SUMED is around $0.95 per barrel, reflecting its commercial joint-venture structure. Goreh-Jask is irrelevant in practice because the volumes are so small.
The all-in cost increase to consumers, however, is more than just the pipeline tariff. The longer voyage distances are the real swing factor. A barrel that previously moved Hormuz-to-Singapore in roughly 14 to 16 days at sea now goes Yanbu-to-Singapore via the Cape of Good Hope, taking 30 to 36 days. Additional bunker fuel, additional voyage days, and tighter tanker availability are adding $0.50 to $1.50 per barrel to the all-in delivered cost depending on the specific route, vessel type, and bunker price. For European deliveries the SUMED route adds roughly $1.20 to $1.80 per barrel relative to a pre-war Hormuz-Suez transit. The net consumer impact is therefore typically in the $0.50 to $1.50 per barrel range. At Brent above $115, this premium is small as a percentage but it is non-zero and it compounds across hundreds of millions of barrels.
The Time Horizon for Real Capacity Expansion
The biggest single lesson from this episode is the asymmetry between the speed of demand destruction and the speed of supply-side pipeline expansion. The market can pull back demand quickly through price and through SPR drawdowns. New pipeline capacity, by contrast, takes years. The realistic horizons:
- Saudi East-West optimisation: 0.3 to 0.5 mb/d of additional capacity is achievable through pump-station optimisation and drag-reducer dosing by Q3 or Q4 2026.
- Habshan-Fujairah Phase 2: 0.5 to 1 mb/d of additional capacity is achievable through new pumping infrastructure and selected looping within 12 to 18 months.
- SUMED capacity expansion: 0.5 mb/d of additional throughput could be achieved within 24 to 36 months through pumping and tank-farm upgrades.
- Iraq IT-1 reactivation: 1.6 mb/d of capacity is mechanically available but legally constrained; restart possible in early 2027 if KRG-Baghdad-Turkey alignment converges.
- New pipeline construction (Iraq-Saudi Yanbu line, Iran second-phase Jask expansion, etc.): 4 to 6 years from final investment decision to first oil.
The total addressable additional capacity that can be brought on within 24 months across all the systems is therefore roughly 2.5 to 3 mb/d. That is meaningful — it would close perhaps a third of the structural gap — but it is not transformative. The gap that remains will be closed by some combination of geopolitical resolution that reopens Hormuz, sustained demand destruction at the margin, and whatever incremental supply OPEC+ producers outside the Gulf can bring online.
The Investor Angles
The pipeline-bypass story has produced several distinct investor angles over the past month, several of which still have running room. Saudi Aramco is a clear beneficiary of the East-West pipeline narrative: the company’s listed shares on Tadawul have outperformed the broader index meaningfully, and the underlying logic — Aramco’s ability to deliver crude to global markets via Yanbu rather than Hormuz — is a structural advantage that should support a sustained valuation premium relative to pure-play Persian-Gulf-exposed peers.
ADNOC’s listed entities have similarly outperformed on the Habshan-Fujairah and Fujairah-port narrative. ADNOC Logistics & Services (ADNOC L&S), in particular, has been a notable winner — the company is the operating contractor for the pipeline, owns and operates a meaningful share of the tanker fleet using Fujairah, and provides the marine support services that have been in tight supply since the crisis began. ADNOC Drilling and ADNOC Distribution have also outperformed though with somewhat less direct exposure to the bypass-flow narrative.
The pipeline-services sector is a more diffuse but interesting opportunity. Schlumberger and Halliburton have meaningful Middle East pipeline-engineering franchises that are seeing accelerated tender activity around debottlenecking projects on East-West and Habshan-Fujairah. The smaller specialty operators — Wood Group on the engineering side, NOV on the equipment side, and the regional firms like Galfar Engineering and Saudi Services for Electro-Mechanic Works — are also seeing increased activity. None of these are pure plays on the bypass story but each has meaningful exposure to it.
SUMED is not directly investable as a public security but several of its joint-venture parents have related listed entities or sovereign-fund exposure that captures the upside indirectly. Kuwait Petroleum Corp’s downstream affiliates, QatarEnergy through its non-LNG operations, and the Egyptian General Petroleum Corp’s broader portfolio all have some line-of-sight to SUMED throughput economics. The Egyptian sovereign equity itself, through the EFG Hermes index and the broader EGX 30, has seen modest outperformance partly attributable to the SUMED-driven hard-currency receipts.
The Geopolitical Implications of a Multi-Route Future
The bigger story, beyond the immediate operational scramble, is that the 2026 crisis is likely to leave a permanent imprint on Gulf energy infrastructure decisions. Iran’s leverage over global oil markets, which has been built on the implicit threat of Hormuz disruption since the 1980s, is meaningfully reduced when alternative routes can carry half of pre-war volume. The strategic logic of investing in Hormuz-bypass infrastructure, which had been weakening as Hormuz operated reliably for decades, is now overwhelming. Every Gulf producer government will be re-prioritising bypass capex.
The Saudi-UAE strategic interdependence — Saudi crude moving through UAE ports, UAE crude using Saudi Red Sea routing for some destinations — has been highlighted in ways that may strengthen the relationship despite the political fracture over OPEC. The Iraq-Saudi pipeline talks have acquired new urgency, with Saudi officials reportedly receptive in principle. The Egyptian SUMED route has been validated as the European market’s primary Persian Gulf backup, strengthening Cairo’s position as a regional energy-logistics hub. Each of these developments has implications well beyond the immediate war.
Tehran is the most clearly disadvantaged actor. Iran’s Goreh-Jask pipeline, which on paper offered strategic optionality, has been exposed as commercially unworkable under sanctions conditions. The Iranian-controlled chokepoint has been demonstrated to be less of a unilateral lever than the post-1979 strategic doctrine had assumed: when the chokepoint closes, Iranian exports suffer too, and the market has alternatives. The post-war negotiating environment will reflect this lesson.
The Long-Term Restructuring of Gulf Tanker Logistics
Beyond the pipelines themselves, the secondary infrastructure — tanker fleets, port-and-bunkering capacity, dry-dock servicing — is being restructured around the alternative routes in real time. Fujairah, which was already the world’s third-largest bunkering hub before the war, is on track to become the second-largest by year-end. The Dubai Drydocks World facility is expanding capacity for VLCC servicing on Hormuz-alternative routings. Yanbu is investing in additional tug capacity and pilot-services capacity. The Egyptian Suez Canal Authority has been quietly accelerating modernisation of the Ain Sokhna terminal complex.
The shipping industry itself is restructuring. Tanker time-charter rates have roughly doubled, partly because longer voyage distances are absorbing tonnage from the global pool, and partly because operators are demanding Hormuz-avoidance clauses in new charter agreements. Frontline, DHT Holdings, Euronav, and the Asian operators have all reported very strong cash flow this quarter. The longer-term restructuring is whether the industry permanently reorients around Fujairah-and-Yanbu rather than direct Hormuz transit. The early indicators suggest a partial permanent shift even if Hormuz fully reopens.
What To Watch In May And June
Several specific data points and events will determine the next phase of the bypass story. First, the Aramco third-quarter operations update, expected in late July, will give the first official disclosure on East-West pipeline operational ceiling and on whether the 5 mb/d run rate is sustainable through the year. Second, the ADNOC investor day, likely scheduled for September, should provide concrete timelines on Habshan-Fujairah Phase 2. Third, the Iraq-Turkey-KRG trilateral talks, ongoing through April and May, will determine whether IT-1 reactivation is realistic for late 2026 or remains stuck. Fourth, OPEC’s June meeting will reveal whether bypass-capacity growth is changing the cartel’s quota arithmetic. Fifth, EIA’s monthly Today in Energy chokepoint update will provide the official US government measure of how much each route is carrying.
The honest framing for the rest of 2026 is that the alternative-route story is real, it is consequential, and it is insufficient. The pipelines do meaningful work; they keep crude moving when the chokepoint does not. They are not enough to make Hormuz disruption a non-event. The market will continue to clear at prices that reflect that gap, and the policy choices — sanctions, ceasefire, SPR releases, fiscal support — will continue to be set against that backdrop. The infrastructure correspondent’s bottom line: the Gulf has been preparing for this day for forty years, and the preparations have been consequential, but they have not been enough. They never could be. That is the lesson of 2026 that will reshape Middle East energy infrastructure decisions for the next decade.
