Gulf States Fast-Track Seven Pipeline Projects to Circumvent Strait of Hormuz

Oil powers have scrambled to diversify routes before: Saudi finished its original East-West line in 1981 during the Iran-Iraq War, and Egypt’s 1957 Suez closure pushed tankers around the Cape. Today’s rush reprises those episodes but at drone-age speed: precision strikes in 2019 and again in April 2026 on Saudi pumping stations proved that even land lines invite asymmetric attack, echoing how railheads became WWI targets a century ago. Strategically, this is a structural pivot from an ocean chokepoint-centric system toward a redundant, continent-spanning network—yet every new mile of pipe shifts the map of winners (Saudi/UAE) and losers (Kuwait/Bahrain) and locks in billions of sunk cost just as the IEA forecasts peak oil demand in the early 2030s. On a 100-year horizon, the episode may matter less for how much crude moves next decade than for cementing the idea—borne out since the 1973 embargo—that energy arteries are weapons, and that resilience, not cheapest delivery, rules geopolitical infrastructure choices.