Pipelines
The bypass arithmetic.
Three pipelines route Gulf crude around the Strait of Hormuz. Their combined nameplate capacity is roughly 6.85 million barrels per day against a normal Hormuz flow of about 17 million barrels of crude and condensate. But the lines already run near that nameplate ceiling, so the spare capacity left to absorb barrels diverted from a closure is small: a thin cushion, not a replacement. Live utilisation, where curated, sits below.
Pipeline bypass.
PipelinesThe three operational pipelines that route Gulf crude around the Strait of Hormuz. Their combined nameplate capacity is the outer limit on how much oil can move by pipe, but the lines already run near that limit, so the spare capacity left to absorb barrels diverted from a closed strait is small. Utilization figures, and the spare-capacity and stranded volumes derived from them, are editorial estimates built on EIA reference capacities, not live pipeline telemetry. They are also the reason this page and the reference pages disagree: those pages say the three lines can move roughly 40% of normal Hormuz crude volume, which is nameplate capacity against normal flow, while the cushion below is the unused headroom left once current running rates are assumed. EIA itself puts the Saudi and UAE lines together at about 4.7 million b/d of bypass capacity available in a disruption, well above our headroom estimate. Treat the cushion as the pessimistic end of a range, not as a measurement.
Saudi Arabia · Yanbu (Red Sea)
Petroline (East-West Pipeline)
5M bpd
Operational · 95% util (est.)
EIA · World Oil Transit Chokepoints →Saudi Aramco's East-West Pipeline carries Arabian Light from Abqaiq to Yanbu on the Red Sea, the single largest non-Hormuz route for Gulf crude.
United Arab Emirates · Fujairah (Gulf of Oman)
ADCOP (Habshan-Fujairah)
1.5M bpd
Operational · 100% util (est.)
EIA · World Oil Transit Chokepoints →ADNOC's Habshan-Fujairah pipeline lifts UAE crude past the Strait of Hormuz to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, where it loads on tankers transiting the open Indian Ocean.
Iran · Jask (Gulf of Oman)
Goreh-Jask Pipeline
350k bpd
Partial · 40% util (est.)
Iran's pipeline from the southwest oilfields to Jask on the Gulf of Oman bypasses the Strait, but throughput remains a fraction of nameplate capacity.
Combined bypass capacity (nameplate) is 6.8 M bpd, roughly 40% of normal Hormuz crude flow. At current utilization the lines already carry 6.4 M bpd, oil that moves by pipe and does not transit the strait. Their unused capacity is 460 k bpd, roughly 2.7% of normal Hormuz crude flow. If the strait closed, the remaining 16.5 M bpd would strand.
Spare cushion
2.7%
unused pipeline capacity, of 17 M bpd normal crude + condensate flow
Saudi Arabia
Petroline.
East–West pipeline · Abqaiq → Yanbu
5.0 mbpd
nameplate capacity
Petroline is the backbone of any Hormuz bypass scenario. It runs roughly 1,200 kilometres east-to-west across the Arabian peninsula, from the Abqaiq processing complex in the Eastern Province to the Red Sea export terminal at Yanbu. Aramco operates it at a typical utilisation well below nameplate; surge capacity to the full 5 mbpd is possible but operationally demanding.
In a Hormuz closure, Petroline is the largest single bypass tool available to the global system. Crude arriving at Yanbu still has to transit Bab-el-Mandeb to reach Asian markets, which means a coincident Red Sea disruption (Houthi missile and drone activity, for instance) compounds the chokepoint problem rather than relieving it.
The 2019 Abqaiq strikes demonstrated the upstream vulnerability: a successful attack on the processing facility removes Petroline's feedstock entirely, regardless of the pipeline's own integrity.
United Arab Emirates
ADCOP.
Habshan → Fujairah
1.5 mbpd
nameplate capacity
The Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline runs roughly 360 kilometres from the inland Habshan field complex to the Fujairah export terminal on the Indian Ocean coast, south of the strait. Operated by ADNOC, ADCOP gives the UAE the only Indian-Ocean export route from the peninsula and is the more strategically located of the two major bypass lines, since Fujairah cargoes immediately access Asian destinations without further chokepoint exposure.
Effective utilisation is constrained by upstream supply allocation rather than pipeline capacity per se. ADCOP ran at extended periods of partial utilisation during the 2010s and was used near nameplate during the 2019 tanker incidents in the strait.
Iran
Goreh–Jask.
Goreh → Jask (Gulf of Oman)
0.35 mbpd
nameplate; current utilisation low
Iran's Goreh-Jask line was inaugurated in 2021 and is intended to give the country an Indian-Ocean export option that avoids Hormuz. Nameplate capacity is roughly 0.35 million barrels per day; actual throughput has been a small fraction of that, constrained by a combination of upstream supply allocation and limited receiving infrastructure at Jask.
Strategically, Goreh-Jask matters less for the short run (the volume is small) and more for what it signals: even Iran, the country with the most coercive stake in the strait being closeable, is working on its own bypass.
Iraq · Türkiye
Kirkuk–Ceyhan.
Iraq → Ceyhan (Mediterranean)
0.9 mbpd
nameplate; intermittent flow
The Iraq–Türkiye Pipeline runs from Kirkuk in northern Iraq through Türkiye to the Ceyhan terminal on the Mediterranean. Nameplate is roughly 0.9 mbpd; in practice it has spent long stretches partially or wholly offline due to a combination of arbitration disputes between Baghdad, the Kurdistan Regional Government, and Ankara, plus periodic damage from regional conflict.
It is the only major bypass route that reaches the Mediterranean directly, which makes it strategically attractive in a Hormuz closure scenario, but the operational reliability is the worst of any pipeline in this set. A return to nameplate operation requires upstream political alignment that has not been the base case for most of the past decade.
Egypt
SUMED + Suez.
Ain Sukhna → Sidi Kerir + Suez Canal
2.5 mbpd
SUMED nameplate · Suez carries additional crude on tankers
The SUMED Pipeline (Suez–Mediterranean Pipeline) runs roughly 320 kilometres from Ain Sukhna on the Red Sea to Sidi Kerir on the Mediterranean, allowing very large crude carriers that cannot transit the Suez Canal fully laden to discharge at one end and reload at the other. SUMED's nameplate is about 2.5 mbpd; the Suez Canal itself carries additional crude and refined product directly on smaller tankers.
For a Hormuz closure, SUMED is a re-routing tool rather than a bypass: it requires that crude has already reached the Red Sea via Petroline (Yanbu) or the Cape route. The compounding chokepoint risk (Houthi missile and drone activity in the southern Red Sea, plus any Suez disruption) means SUMED works as a reliever only when the Red Sea remains operational. In recent years this has been an inconstant assumption.
The arithmetic
Cushion, not replacement.
Combined nameplate bypass capacity from the Gulf-side pipelines (Petroline 5.0 + ADCOP 1.5 + Goreh-Jask 0.35) is roughly 6.85 mbpd against normal Hormuz flow of 17 mbpd. Under curated current utilisation those lines already carry about 6.4 mbpd, so the unused headroom today is closer to 0.5 mbpd, a few percent of normal flow, not the full nameplate figure. The Mediterranean-side relief routes (Kirkuk-Ceyhan 0.9 + SUMED 2.5) add nominal capacity but require crude already on the right side of the strait or on the Red Sea, and both have their own reliability constraints.
Bypass therefore caps the floor of the disruption rather than removing it. SPR drawdowns can add another 5–7 mbpd for 30–60 days. Demand destruction closes the rest of the gap, principally through prices, which is why a Hormuz closure is read at consumers as a price shock, not a volume shock.
Capacities are nameplate figures from the EIA World Oil Transit Chokepoints briefing and EIA country analyses. Current utilisation and operational status are straits.live estimates built on that reference data, not EIA-published figures.