Scott Bessent believes the Strait of Hormuz could become almost irrelevant within two years. Qatar disagrees. The argument matters because it goes to the heart of what the Gulf has learned from the Iran war: energy security is not simply about producing more oil. It is about getting energy out. Bessent’s thesis is understandable. Hormuz has become a strategic vulnerability. Roughly a fifth of global oil and LNG supplies normally pass through the Strait, and the conflict has demonstrated how quickly that concentration can become an economic weapon. His answer is infrastructure: build pipelines across the Gulf, bypass the waterway and remove Iran’s leverage. Saudi Arabia already has the East–West pipeline. The UAE has the Habshan–Fujairah system. Iraq is developing alternatives. More capacity will undoubtedly follow. But pipelines can reduce dependence on Hormuz. They cannot replace it. Saudi Arabia has just demonstrated why. Its East–West pipeline, precisely the infrastructure designed to bypass Hormuz, was attacked and temporarily shut. Saudi crude subsequently moved back towards the Strait as Aramco tried to maintain exports. Recent data show Saudi shipments through Hormuz recovering above 4 million barrels a day in September. The bypass became unavailable. So the supposedly obsolete route became necessary again. That is the first weakness in the argument. Pipelines eliminate maritime concentration by creating infrastructure concentration. A tanker route can move. A pipeline cannot. Its pumping stations, terminals and storage facilities are fixed, visible and expensive assets. Once the conflict expands beyond Hormuz itself, land infrastructure becomes another potential target rather than a permanent solution.

Qatar exposes the second problem. Doha has explicitly said it does not currently intend to build new pipelines around Hormuz. Energy Minister Saad Al-Kaabi argues that the decision is commercial and technical. That matters because Qatar’s main export is not crude. It is LNG. And LNG is considerably harder to reroute. Qatar can build pipelines for domestic gas distribution. Replacing its seaborne LNG export system would be something entirely different. It would require enormous cross-border pipeline infrastructure, political agreements, new export terminals and potentially different receiving infrastructure thousands of kilometres away. Hormuz therefore remains structurally embedded in Qatar’s business model. The current crisis is already affecting QatarEnergy’s expansion programme because equipment needed for new LNG projects is struggling to move through the region.

There is also a third mistake in reducing Hormuz to oil. The Strait carries much more. LNG. Petroleum products. Petrochemicals. Fertilisers. Containers. Industrial equipment. Food. Reuters estimates that roughly one-third of global fertiliser flows, including sulphur and ammonia, normally pass through the waterway. No network of crude-oil pipelines replaces that. This does not mean Bessent’s broader strategy is meaningless. Quite the opposite. The Gulf will almost certainly spend enormous amounts reducing its exposure to individual chokepoints. Saudi Arabia will reinforce its Red Sea infrastructure. The UAE will continue expanding Fujairah. Iraq will develop alternative export routes. Ports, storage, pipelines and strategic inventories will multiply. But that does not make Hormuz worthless. It makes redundancy expensive. And redundancy has another uncomfortable consequence.

Every alternative route creates another asset to defend. The East–West pipeline requires protection. Yanbu requires protection. Fujairah requires protection. Red Sea shipping requires protection. Bab el-Mandeb requires protection. The more infrastructure the Gulf builds to escape one chokepoint, the larger the security perimeter becomes. That may be the real lesson of the past seven months. Hormuz’s strategic value doesn’t come only from the amount of oil passing through it. It comes from geography. The Gulf’s largest energy producers sit on one side. The global economy sits on the other. Pipelines can change how some barrels travel between them. They cannot change the map. In two years, Hormuz may carry a smaller share of Gulf crude. It may have more competitors. It may become less dominant. But “worthless” is a very different proposition. The war has actually demonstrated the opposite. You can build around geography. You cannot abolish it.