By Olivia Hart

Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Iraq operate the only crude pipelines that can move Gulf barrels around the Strait of Hormuz. Al Jazeera has posed the question directly: can these three routes help oil escape the chokepoint? The honest answer, on the numbers the industry has long published, is only in part.

The strait matters because of volume. Hormuz carries roughly a fifth of global traded crude and products. Any closure, or even sustained threat, would force exporters onto bypass lines that were built decades ago for exactly this contingency.

Which three pipelines are in play?

Saudi Arabia holds the largest spare route. The East-West pipeline, known as Petroline, runs from Abqaiq on the Gulf coast to Yanbu on the Red Sea. Its nameplate capacity, as reported by Saudi Aramco and widely cited in trade press, is about 5 million bpd. Actual throughput has rarely approached that figure. The line gives the kingdom a genuine, tested alternative to Hormuz.

The UAE contributes the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline, or ADCOP. It runs from Habshan in Abu Dhabi to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, outside the strait. Capacity is generally reported at about 1.5 million bpd. Fujairah has since grown into a major storage and export terminal, which extends the pipeline's usefulness beyond its nameplate arithmetic.

Iraq's option is the least reliable of the three. The Iraq–Turkey pipeline from Kirkuk to Ceyhan on the Mediterranean has a nominal capacity near 1.4 million bpd but has spent long stretches idle. Exports through the line stopped in March 2023 after an arbitration ruling, and Baghdad and Ankara have worked since then to restore flows. Its contribution to any Hormuz workaround depends on politics as much as pipes.

What does the arithmetic add up to?

Taken together, the three lines offer meaningful but incomplete insurance. The combined nameplate capacity of Petroline, ADCOP and the Iraq–Turkey route would offset a portion of the roughly 17–18 million bpd that transits Hormuz on a typical day, according to figures cited by the US Energy Information Administration and other agencies.

The gap matters. Gulf producers outside Saudi Arabia and the UAE, including Kuwait, Qatar and Iran's other Gulf customers, have no bypass pipeline at all. Their crude moves by tanker or not at all. No operator can reroute condensate or LNG around the strait either; Qatar's cargoes have no pipeline substitute.

Why does the question resurface now?

Al Jazeera's framing reflects a recurring pattern. Regional tensions, tanker seizures and insurance spikes have periodically pushed Hormuz risk back onto front pages since the 1980s tanker war. Each episode revives the same questions: how fast could Aramco ramp Petroline, how much spare room does ADCOP hold, and could Iraq's line carry anything at all.

The operational record gives partial answers. Aramco demonstrated after the September 2019 Abqaiq attack that it could keep exports flowing by drawing storage and redirecting flows. The UAE built ADCOP explicitly to reach water outside the strait. Iraq, by contrast, has never operated its northern export route at anything close to capacity in recent years.

What is the watch item?

Watch three indicators. First, throughput on Petroline, which Aramco does not publish in detail; tanker tracking from Yanbu is the market's proxy. Second, the pace of any restart on the Iraq–Turkey line, which Baghdad and Ankara have discussed repeatedly since 2023. Third, insurance rates for Gulf charters, the fastest-moving signal of perceived chokepoint risk.

Takeaway in plain words: three pipelines can move some oil around Hormuz, but far from all of it, and the weakest link runs through Iraq.