Hormuz Strait: Here are alternative ways about the point of suffocation

While Iran’s military capabilities have deteriorated due to the punishment of Israeli air strikes that began a week and a half ago, the Islamic Republic was able to do so Rocket launch at an American base in Qatar on monday.

However, the Strait of Hermoz is a decisive point of suffocation in the global energy trade that Iran can prohibit. Iranian lawmakers agreed to close it after the American attack, but security officials have not yet registered it, and the waterway remained open on Monday. Some tankers Stay away from the strait anyway.

According to US Energy Information Management (EIA), 20 million barrels of oil per day flow through the strait, or about 20 % of global petroleum fluid consumption and about a quarter of global oil trade transmitted to walls.

In addition to oil, about five global liquefied natural gas trade also passed through the Strait of Hormuz last year, primarily from Qatar.

Given its importance to energy trade, closing the strait will lead to massive disturbances in the market. A note earlier this month, George Saravilus, President of FX Research in German bankIt is estimated that the worst status scenario-a complete disruption of Iranian oil supplies and the closure of the hormone Strait-can send oil prices above $ 120 a barrel. This would represent an increase of 56 % over the current price of the raw pint.

Any closing of mines, patrol boats, aircraft, cruise missiles and diesel submarines may require. While the US Navy published a huge group of ships to the area, the straightening of the strait may take weeks or months.

But there are alternative methods that can help reduce some of the effects of any closure.

For example, the power giant run by the state Saudi Aramco It runs the east and west crude oil pipeline from the Abqaiq Oil Center near the Persian Gulf to the Yanbu port on the Red Sea, according to the measuring the environmental environment.

The United Arab Emirates is running another pipeline that goes beyond the Strait of Hermoz by linking the wild oil fields to the Fujairah Export Station in the Gulf of Amman.

The environmental impact assessment estimates that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates pipelines can be used to convert 2.6 million barrels per day from the Strait of Hormuz.

This compares 5.5 million barrels per day of crude and condensed by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through the strait last year.

Iran also has a pipeline and export on the Gulf of Oman that can exceed the Strait of Hormuz. The pipeline capacity is about 300,000 barrels per day, but its actual use was much less. During the summer of 2024, Iran exported less than 70,000 barrels per day through this alternative path and stopped loading shipments after September 2024, according to the measuring of the environmental environment.

On the contrary, the vast majority of Iranian oil exports, whose average reached about 1.5 million barrels per day last year, passes through the Strait of Hormuz.

Many analysts believe that the Iranian closure of the strait is unlikely because doing this would destroy its own economy in this process and lead to a possible catastrophic response from the United States

in The column in Foreign affairs magazine Earlier this month, Kenneth Pollack, former military analyst of the CIA in the Persian Gulf and former director of the Persian Gulf Affairs at the National Security Council, said there is a low possibility that would close Iran.

This is because Iran will move quickly from a “sympathetic victim to a dangerous enemy in the eyes of most other countries”, while Western countries and perhaps even China will use the power to reopen the strait, as it predicted.

“Tehran will have to worry that such a reckless threat to the economies of the world will convince Washington that the Iranian regime should be removed,” Pollack added. “This fear is definitely greater with US President Donald Trump – who ordered the death of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani in January 2020 – in his position.”