One-fifth of the world's oil sails through a strait barely 21 miles wide.
And right now, the Gulf's richest nations are racing to make sure that stops mattering.
Welcome to the billion-dollar escape plan from the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran has been flexing hard — threatening tankers, floating tolls that could rake in tens of billions, even demanding cash for "safe passage."
So the Gulf did what empires do when a chokepoint gets too risky.
They built around it.
The 252-mile pipeline will run beside the existing Fujairah line.
Result? UAE's land export capacity doubles to 3.6 million barrels a day.
ADNOC's chief put it bluntly: "Too much of the world's energy still moves through too few choke points."
They saw this coming, long before the headlines caught up.
Iraq just broke ground on a 435-mile pipeline to Haditha, eventually linking Jordan, Syria and Turkey.
$1.5 billion. 2.5 million barrels a day. And Washington is quietly backing it, with Chevron reportedly at the table.
Saudi Arabia? Studying a jump to 9 million barrels a day via the Red Sea.
Even Dubai's Jebel Ali port is about to get a rival — on the Arabian Sea side of Hormuz.
Even after all this spending, 7 to 9 million barrels a day will still need Hormuz.
And the backup route through the Red Sea? It runs straight past Houthi rebels threatening the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
You can build a thousand pipelines.
You still can't build your way out of geography completely.
That's all for now!
