Not unexpectedly, hostilities erupted again in the Gulf region. Iran is determined to assert control over the Hormuz Strait and impose tolls on shipping through the vital energy route. The global community and India should be prepared for a prolonged, if intermittent, disruption of supplies from the Gulf region.

All the steps taken by the Union government so far are vital and effective in ensuring uninterrupted supplies. The government deserves credit for competent and timely management of the crisis. Now that this disruption should turn out to be a long-term, festering problem, we need to go beyond contingency planning. Two critical strategies are vital to protect the future—finding alternative supply routes to bypass the Hormuz Strait on a permanent basis and substantially reducing import dependence in the energy sector. 

First, let us look at alternative supply routes. Already, the existing alternative routes helped mitigate the global energy crisis to some extent. Saudi Arabia built the East-West pipeline to the western Red Sea port of Yanbu. This pipeline was built during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s as an alternative route in the event of disruption of energy supplies through the Persian Gulf. It has the capacity to transport seven million barrels of crude oil per day (mbd) from the Abqaiq oil fields in the Eastern Province to the Red Sea. During the current crisis, this 1200 km pipeline operated at full capacity and helped mitigate the global energy shortages substantially. The Saudi government is now negotiating with Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar to expand the pipeline capacity by 2 mbd to........

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