An employee of the Basra Oil Company, works at the Nahr Bin Umar Oil and Gas Field on the outskirts of the southern Iraqi city of Basra on April 29, 2026.
Hussein Faleh Afp | Getty Images
Iraq and the United Arab Emirates are planning to accelerate the expansion of oil pipelines to accommodate the capacity lost by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, as new data reveal their strong dependence on the Persian Gulf.
Last week, the Iraqi Cabinet approved plans to speed up exports through the Kurdistan-Turkey pipeline network, which would more than triple its current exports from 220,000 barrels per day to 770,000.
The route provides an alternative route through Kurdistan to the Turkish Mediterranean port of Ceyhan. If fully operational, it should provide relief to Iraq’s oil-dependent economy, which contributes 53% of its real GDP by 2025, according to the World Bank.
Exclusive data shown to CNBC by economic intelligence provider QuantCube Technology shows that exports to Iraq as a whole have almost dried up since the start of the war, due to its geographic dependence on Hormuz.
The QuantCube index measures the volume of deadweight tonnage leaving Iraqi and UAE ports, providing an estimate of the weight of cargo carried by ships.
“Iraq is in a very difficult situation because we know that most, if not all of its oil, goes through Hormuz,” Alan Lemangnen, senior economist at QuantCube, told CNBC in an interview.
Iraq announced at a press conference on May 16 that it had shipped 10 million barrels of oil through the Strait of Hormuz in April, up from 93 million barrels before the war.
Meanwhile, Abu Dhabi is fast-tracking the construction of a new West-East pipeline to Fujairah as it looks to increase its oil export capacity and bypass the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint.
The project, which is expected to be online by 2027, will double the export capacity of Abu Dhabi National Oil Company (ADNOC).
The Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan on May 15 called for the immediate delivery of the pipeline to meet the growing global energy demand.
The UAE can still export oil elsewhere, easing the impact of the Hormuz blockade.
“It is clear that Iraq, because of its location and its inability to move again, is in a much more difficult situation than the UAE or the KSA,” Lemangnen said.
“The UAE still has the Fujairah terminal. Even though it was destroyed during the war, it still has the vision, the infrastructure and the ships to send a large amount of oil.”
But even existing alternatives are vulnerable. The Saudi East-West pipeline was attacked by Iran in April, and Fujairah was also attacked by Iranian drones, disrupting oil loading operations at its export point.
The East-West pipeline, which links processing facilities near the Persian Gulf to an export point in the Red Sea, and the UAE pipeline to the port of Fujairah, has an estimated 3.5 to 5.5 million barrels per day (mb/d) of available capacity, the IEA notes, although Saudi Arabia said in March its pipeline was pumping 7 mb/d.
But the flow remains far short of the nearly 20 million barrels of oil and petroleum products that passed through the Strait of Hormuz every day before the war.
Developing alternative export routes involves not only huge investment in infrastructure, but also time. Often international agreements are required when pipelines pass through several areas.
Shipping through Hormuz remains below pre-war levels. Traffic on the sea route dropped to its lowest point since the Iran war in May, according to Lloyd’s List.
The ships are stuck in a dangerous Gulf invasion by Iran’s military unless they get Tehran’s permission to move through the established route through Hormuz. They also risk US sanctions if they cooperate with Iran.
– CNBC’s Emma Graham, Holly Ellyatt and Spencer Kimball also contributed to this report.
