By Adam Reed
When Donald Trump publicly endorsed Syria as a possible overland route to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, he didn’t just float an idea. He turned a long-simmering regional pipe dream into a live geopolitical talking point. On paper, the logic has a certain brutal simplicity. After the recent conflict in the Middle East, oil flows through that narrow maritime pinch point crashed from a pre-crisis average of 21.6 million barrels per day down to a paltry 4.9 mbpd. For global markets, that sudden cliff-dive was a cold, hard slap of reality, laying bare just how precarious it is to have the world’s energy lifeline squeezed through one single waterway.
But buying into Syria as some kind of quick-fix exit ramp for global energy woes? That seriously misreads both the math of maritime logistics and the messy, combustible reality of the region’s politics. Pipelines simply cannot do what tankers do: shipping by sea is cheaper, more adaptable, and moves volumes that no overland network could ever hope to handle. The real, sober strategic goal here isn’t replacement. It’s redundancy. It’s about carving out a few targeted, secure export corridors that can soak up the shock when the Strait inevitably goes into crisis mode.
Overland pipelines cannot replace maritime shipping volume; the strategic goal must be building pragmatic, shock-absorbing redundancy.
We already have a few bypass routes in play, and they tell you a lot about what’s possible, and what isn’t. Saudi Arabia runs the neighborhood’s most robust setup via Aramco’s East-West Pipeline (Petroline), which shuttles crude from eastern fields straight to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. At the height of the recent maritime chaos, Riyadh pushed that system to its ragged edge, managing to pump roughly 5 mbpd through Yanbu, falling short of its 7 mbpd nameplate capacity. The UAE, for its part, leaned on its Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline to move 1.8 mbpd to Fujairah, neatly sidestepping the Gulf chokepoint.
These systems offered a lifeline, no doubt. But let’s be honest: they’re modest compared to the sheer scale of global consumption. And here’s the kicker, shifting crude to Yanbu might dodge Hormuz, but it only swaps one set of maritime risks for another, smack in the middle of the Red Sea and the Bab el-Mandeb strait. Nameplate capacity is one thing; actual spare capacity when things go sideways is another. So yes, these bypasses can cushion market jolts, but fully absorb them? Not a chance.
That harsh reality has regional producers looking to bulk up their overland transit game. Saudi Arabia is now weighing plans to expand its westward export infrastructure by another 1 to 2 mbpd, which could also open up export lanes for landlocked neighbors like Kuwait, Qatar, and Bahrain. Since this build-out stays entirely within Saudi borders, it keeps political risks manageable and control firmly in sovereign hands.
Bypassing the Gulf via Red Sea ports swaps one set of maritime chokepoints for another, highlighting the limits of existing bypass capacity.
The Syrian corridor, though? That’s a whole different beast. Under new political leadership, Damascus is actively pitching itself as a transit hub linking Iraqi production in Basra straight to Mediterranean terminals at Baniyas. There’s chatter about Chevron leading a project to build a 2 mbpd pipeline along that route, expanding on a costly, ad-hoc network that already moves thousands of tanker trucks daily across the region.
Proponents talk up the upside: transforming Syria into an energy corridor would pull in foreign investment, generate transit fees, and give Iraqi crude a direct shot at European markets. But the economic and operational obstacles are staggering. Building new steel infrastructure across the Levant would cost anywhere from $5.7 billion to north of $15 billion, with construction dragging on for two to four years.
More importantly, pipelines don’t erase geopolitical risk; they just move it around. A pipeline running from southern Iraq to the Syrian coast would have to cut through vast stretches where physical security is still deeply, dangerously fragile. The proposed route winds through western Iraq and central Syria, areas crawling with insurgent cells, militia checkpoints, and hair-trigger political volatility. Securing thousands of kilometers of exposed steel demands rock-solid political guarantees, round-the-clock physical protection, and comprehensive insurance coverage, none of which are exactly easy to come by in today’s climate.
Pipelines do not erase geopolitical vulnerability; long-haul steel infrastructure simply redistributes risk across unstable overland corridors.
What’s more, strategic pipelines essentially function as insurance policies. When regional waters are calm, commercial tankers plying open seas will almost always undercut the per-barrel tariff of long-haul overland pipelines. So investors and sovereign funds have to ask themselves a tough question: are they ready to sink tens of billions into infrastructure that might operate far below capacity whenever Gulf shipping goes back to normal?
The old Kirkuk-Baniyas pipeline is a sobering ghost story here. First fired up in 1952 with a capacity of 300,000 barrels a day, it got knocked offline during the 1956 Suez Crisis, again during the Iran-Iraq War in 1982, and was finally rendered useless by damage in the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. For over seventy years, cross-border energy projects in the Levant have been plagued by geopolitical feuds, sabotage, and political closures. Rebuilding that corridor under today’s security dynamics would mean wrestling with the same structural frailties that did it in the first place.
Then there’s the legal and financial thicket. Pumping stations, storage tanks, offshore loading buoys, refineries: all of it requires multi-nation transit pacts, tariff structures, and clear dispute-resolution mechanisms. In a region where sanctions, unstable governance, and fluid regulations are the norm, locking down project financing or institutional insurance for a long-haul cross-border infrastructure venture is an uphill battle.
For global policymakers and energy planners, the real takeaway shouldn’t be chasing some fantasy of a “Hormuz-free” future. Asian energy demand is simply too immense; the Strait will stay the main artery for Middle Eastern crude. Instead, international strategy ought to focus on building pragmatic, scalable redundancy. Expanding internal domestic networks, like Saudi Arabia’s westward links or Iraq’s internal strategic backbones, offers quick, low-risk security gains. Cross-border transit projects through Syria, Jordan, or Turkey are worth long-term technical vetting, but governments need to stop mistaking flashy press releases for actual operational capacity. Until a proposed pipeline is fully financed, buried, secured, and hooked up to export terminals, it provides exactly zero protection when the next global supply shock hits.
About the Author
Adam Reed is an International affairs analyst focusing on geopolitics, defense strategy, and global security trends.