The Myth of Bypassing Hormuz
By A.SADEGHIAN Ph.D.
Pipelines can bypass the Strait of Hormuz, but they cannot bypass geography, politics, war, or the enduring strategic importance of the Persian Gulf.
For decades, every major confrontation involving Iran has revived the same question: What would happen if the Strait of Hormuz were closed? The latest Middle Eastern conflict has produced a more ambitious version of that question. Instead of merely asking how the world can survive a temporary disruption of Hormuz, policymakers are increasingly asking whether new pipelines, ports, alternative shipping routes, and eventually alternative sources of energy could make the strait substantially less important or even irrelevant.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently went considerably further, suggesting that expanding pipeline infrastructure could turn Hormuz into a "worthless" body of water within approximately two years. The attraction of the idea is obvious. If oil can simply be transported around the strait, Iran loses much of the strategic leverage created by geography. There is, however, a fundamental problem with this argument: geography is considerably more difficult to defeat than it appears on a pipeline map.
The Gulf states can, and almost certainly will, reduce their dependence on Hormuz. They can construct pipelines across Arabia, enlarge ports on the Gulf of Oman and the Red Sea, expand storage facilities, and develop alternative export terminals. These projects are strategically sensible because redundancy makes transportation systems more resilient. But reducing dependence on Hormuz is fundamentally different from making Hormuz irrelevant.
The Numbers Are Enormous
Before the present disruption, approximately 20.9 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products passed through the Strait of Hormuz during the first half of 2025, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That represented roughly 20 percent of worldwide petroleum liquids consumption and approximately one-quarter of global maritime oil trade. The strait was equally important to natural gas. Approximately 11.4 billion cubic feet per day of liquefied natural gas passed through Hormuz during the same period, representing more than one-fifth of worldwide LNG trade, with Qatar accounting for most of this traffic.
The geographical concentration of this trade is particularly important for Asia. The EIA estimated that 89 percent of crude oil and condensate passing through Hormuz during the first half of 2025 was destined for Asian markets. China, India, Japan, and South Korea together accounted for approximately 74 percent. These numbers help explain why governments and energy companies have spent enormous amounts of money developing alternative routes.
Saudi Arabia possesses the East-West Pipeline, commonly known as Petroline, connecting its eastern oil-producing regions with Yanbu on the Red Sea. The United Arab Emirates operates the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, outside Hormuz. Additional pipelines have been proposed, while Iraq has repeatedly explored routes toward the Mediterranean. Yet the immediately available bypass capacity of existing systems remains only a fraction of the enormous volume normally passing through Hormuz. Alternative pipelines provide important insurance against disruption, but they do not presently constitute a replacement for the strait.
A Pipeline Is a Chokepoint Turned Sideways
The fundamental weakness in the argument that pipelines can eliminate the strategic importance of Hormuz is the assumption that a pipeline somehow escapes geopolitics. It does not. A maritime chokepoint concentrates vulnerability into a narrow body of water, while a pipeline stretches vulnerability across hundreds or sometimes thousands of kilometers of territory.
A major pipeline is not simply a steel tube buried underground. It requires pumping stations, electrical power, valves, storage facilities, communications networks, access roads, maintenance installations, and export terminals. Damage to a relatively small number of critical components can interrupt a system capable of carrying millions of barrels per day. Protecting an entire pipeline corridor can therefore be more complicated than protecting the line visible on a map would suggest.
Saudi Arabia has now provided a dramatic demonstration of this problem. Since disruption of shipping through Hormuz increased the importance of alternative routes, the Saudi East-West Pipeline became one of the world's most important alternative oil arteries, capable of carrying millions of barrels per day across roughly 1,200 kilometers of Saudi territory to the Red Sea. When attacks damaged the system, crude loading at Yanbu was disrupted, cargoes were delayed or cancelled, and international oil markets reacted.
By September 16, Saudi Arabia was seeking additional flexibility by offering crude through ship-to-ship transfers near Sohar, Oman, outside Hormuz, while also relying on loading facilities inside the Persian Gulf. None of this demonstrates that alternative routes are useless. Quite the opposite: redundancy is extraordinarily valuable. What it demonstrates is that moving oil away from Hormuz does not eliminate vulnerability. It relocates vulnerability from one transportation system to another.
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