National defense and security concerns are of greater importance than common day-to-day commercial ventures, and this principle also applies to small nations. In this way, the government of Abu Dhabi undertook the construction of a 423 km long pipeline at a cost of more than $4 billion that is now able to transport around 1.5 million barrels a day of its crude to a port at Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman in the Arabian Sea from which VLCC tankers, that can ship 2 million-barrel cargoes, can transport the crude to its Asian clients.


This new pipeline by-passes the Strait of Hormuz which is a  vital strategic waterway  for  international commerce, and through which goods imported or exported by Iran, Kuwait, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia have to transit.


Pipelines for both oil and gas could be an alternative to avoid the instability of the Strait of Hormuz caused by repeated Iranian threats to its closure. Clearly, such construction would take time and its financial cost would be high, but it would free the world, as well as Iran’s neighbors, from the threat that Teheran has been repeating since 1981 when it was at war with Iraq until 1988.


Mazhar Al Shereidah