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The oil pipelines that could decide the Iran war

Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline can divert oil from Hormuz, easing price shocks. It may buy Trump time, but the White House is making a high-risk bet the war ends before oil pressure spikes.

Washington: Iran’s strategy in its war with the US and Israel is by now clear: Impose an intolerable economic cost on President Donald Trump, forcing him to abandon his “war of choice” as American gasoline prices surge. Is there any way the Islamic Republic’s blueprint for survival can fail? Yes, if its old regional nemesis, Saudi Arabia, can cushion the oil market.

Enter the East-West pipeline, a 1,200-kilometer (746 mile) conduit crisscrossing the Arabian Peninsula from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea. Its raison d’être is to meet this historic moment: Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The Saudis built it 45 years ago thinking that, one day, Tehran would manage to do what was then unthinkable and halt shipments through the narrow waterway.

The strait is a choke point for about 20 million barrels a day of crude and refined products — equal to a fifth of global consumption. The Saudi pipeline can’t offset all of that, nowhere near. But it can provide a workaround for as much as 5 million daily barrels. Another pipeline, owned by the United Arab Emirates, offers a separate bypass option to the Gulf of Oman for 1.5 million barrels. In an emergency, the UAE can probably push it close to 2........

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