No route around Hormuz: Why West Asia’s pipeline
alternatives fall short
The rush to bypass Hormuz leads back to the same
problem: Every alternative route remains hostage to war, rival chokepoints, or
political disputes.
Hussein Askary
JUL 23, 2026
https://thecradle.co/articles/no-route-around-hormuz-why-west-asias-pipeline-alternatives-fall-short
“The only alternative to the Strait of Hormuz is the
Strait of Hormuz.”
This blunt assessment, offered by an Iraqi expert in a
recent interview, captures the central weakness in the rush to revive old
pipeline schemes and promote new ones across West Asia. Since Iran effectively
closed the Strait of Hormuz after Israel and the US launched their second war
against it in February 2026, the region has been flooded with proposals
for alternative oil-export routes.
Washington has encouraged these plans, while several governments have
presented dormant or unfinished pipelines as strategic solutions. Yet the
closer one looks at geography, markets, costs, capacity, and security, the
clearer it becomes that most of these projects cannot substitute for
Hormuz.
Even if oil bypasses the strait, it still faces the
rival chokepoint of Bab al-Mandab, where the Ansarallah-aligned armed forces have
declared a maritime blockade against Saudi Arabia and attacked Saudi
tankers.
These expensive detours will remain exposed unless
security in the Persian Gulf itself improves. Until the war on Iran ends and an
inclusive regional security architecture is established, Iranian and Yemeni
missiles and drones can reach the pipelines and loading terminals built to
evade them.
Asia still runs through Hormuz
The first reason is straightforward. The Strait of
Hormuz is the natural outlet of the Gulf energy system. In 2024, oil flows
through the strait averaged about 20 million barrels per day (bpd), roughly one-fifth of global petroleum
liquids consumption. The International Energy Agency (IEA) describes it as one
of the world’s most important oil transit chokepoints.
Most of this oil is not heading west. About 80 percent
of the oil moving through Hormuz is destined for Asia, with China, India,
Japan, South Korea, and other Asian economies as the principal buyers. The
pattern is even clearer for liquefied natural gas (LNG).
The US Energy Information Administration estimated
that 83 percent of LNG moving through Hormuz in 2024 went from
Persian Gulf exporters to Asian markets, especially China, India, and South
Korea.
This market reality matters because many proposed
alternatives send oil away from its main customers. Pipelines to the
Mediterranean, the Red Sea, or the Levant may appear useful on a map, but they
often move Gulf crude farther from Asia rather than closer to it.
Commercially, building multibillion-dollar
infrastructure to move oil westward, only to redirect it by sea toward Asian
markets, is inefficient. If Hormuz is open, the direct route remains cheaper
and faster. If it is closed by war, the underlying problem is not a lack of
pipelines but the collapse of regional security.
Old routes, unresolved disputes
The older pipeline options illustrate the point.
The Kirkuk–Baniyas pipeline once carried Iraqi oil across Syria to the
Mediterranean. Built in the early 1950s, it had genuine strategic value in its
time but has been largely inactive since it was damaged during the 2003 US-led
invasion of Iraq. Washington is now backing efforts to revive the route, with
US companies expected to play a role. Yet the project still requires extensive
reconstruction and years of work before it can provide meaningful export
capacity.
Estimates for a full restoration and expansion to
around 700,000 bpd run as high as $8 billion. It cannot answer an immediate crisis in Hormuz, and
if regional peace is restored before completion, the commercial case for
reviving it weakens sharply.
The Iraq–Turkiye pipeline faces a different but
equally serious problem: politics. The route through the Kurdistan region to
Turkiye’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan was repeatedly interrupted by disputes among
Baghdad, the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Ankara, and international oil
companies.
A 2023 arbitration ruling against Turkiye over
unauthorized Kurdish exports led to a two-and-a-half-year shutdown. Flows
resumed in September 2025, and exports have continued, but the route still
depends on fragile agreements over contracts, payments, federal authority, and
revenue sharing.
Its limited throughput and political vulnerability
prevent it from becoming a structural replacement for a maritime passage that
normally carries a vast share of the world’s seaborne oil.
The Iraqi pipeline in Saudi Arabia, known as IPSA, is another example of strategic nostalgia. Built in
the 1980s during the Iran–Iraq war, it was designed to move Iraqi crude from
the Basra region to the Red Sea.
It stopped operating after Iraq’s 1990 invasion of
Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia expropriated it in 2001. Reopening the line would
therefore require a Saudi–Iraqi political settlement over ownership and
control, as well as a major technical assessment after decades of disuse. In
other words, IPSA is not an available alternative; it is a diplomatic and
engineering problem dressed up as a solution.
The proposed Basra–Aqaba pipeline is even more controversial. Its advertised
purpose is to move Iraqi oil from southern Iraq to Jordan’s Red Sea port of
Aqaba, bypassing Hormuz. Yet it has faced intense objections inside Iraq
because of its projected cost, uncertain financing, and questionable strategic
value.
Since much of Iraq’s crude is sold to Asian customers,
sending it westward to Aqaba would add distance and complexity rather than
solve the basic market problem. The pipeline would also move Iraqi exports
closer to another zone of instability, including the Israeli military sphere
and the wider Red Sea security environment.
A bypass route that merely exchanges one security risk
for another is no solution. Iraq’s severe fiscal pressures also leave Baghdad
poorly placed to finance such an expensive project, while international
investors are unlikely to embrace it without strong political and security
guarantees.
Bypasses within missile range
The existing Saudi and Emirati bypasses are more
credible but still limited. Saudi Arabia’s East–West Pipeline, or Petroline,
moves crude from the eastern oil region to Yanbu on the Red Sea. The UAE’s Abu
Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline carries oil from Habshan to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman.
These systems reduce exposure to Hormuz for Saudi
Arabia and the UAE and have become important national energy-security assets.
But they cannot replace the strait for the region as a whole. They offer
little to Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Iran, or most Iraqi exports, and they do not
solve the LNG problem, especially Qatar’s dependence on Hormuz.
The IEA estimates that only 3.5 to 5.5 million bpd of
spare pipeline capacity is available to bypass the strait. Neither Yanbu nor Fujairah are immune from attack; regional conflict has already shown
the vulnerability of ports, tankers, and energy infrastructure.
The crisis pipelines cannot solve
This is why the alternative pipeline debate is
misleading. It treats the closure of Hormuz as a logistical puzzle when it is
primarily a political and security crisis. If the Persian Gulf remains
militarized and unstable, no pipeline network can fully protect exports.
Pipelines cross vulnerable territory, depend on
political agreements, and terminate at ports that can also be threatened. If
Gulf security improves, however, Hormuz will almost certainly reopen because
this serves the interests of producers and Asian consumers alike.
Once that happens, the commercial rationale for many
alternative pipelines will fade. Why spend tens of billions of dollars
duplicating a natural route with unmatched capacity and direct access to the
main buyers?
The more honest conclusion is that alternative
pipelines may offer limited resilience for individual states, but they are no
strategic replacement for Hormuz. They are costly, slow, politically fragile,
geographically inefficient, and in some cases obsolete before construction
begins.
The answer to the crisis is a security arrangement
that keeps the Persian Gulf open, prevents attacks on shipping, and restores
normal trade through the strait.
Under such an arrangement, oil and LNG would continue
to flow mainly to Asia by the most direct and economical route. Hormuz will
remain indispensable, while the grand pipeline alternatives amount to expensive
insurance policies against a crisis that only diplomacy and regional peace can
resolve.
