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Scott Bessent looked into a Fox Business camera on September 1 and declared that the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway separating Iran from the Arabian Peninsula, would become “a worthless piece of water” within two years. Qatar’s Energy Minister Saad al-Kaabi has a different assessment: Bessent is simply wrong.
The disagreement isn’t academic. Roughly 34% of the world’s crude oil passed through the Strait of Hormuz in 2025, according to the IEA. That makes it the single most important chokepoint in global energy markets.
The Bessent thesis and Qatar’s rebuttal
Bessent’s argument rests on a straightforward premise: pipeline capacity expansions by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iraq will reroute enough oil volume by 2027 to render the Strait irrelevant as a strategic chokepoint.
Al-Kaabi has been vocal about the Strait’s enduring importance. Back in May 2026, he stated plainly that “everybody is obligated to open the Strait of Hormuz for the economies of the world.” His latest comments escalate that position further, warning that any geopolitical disruption to operations in the area could send oil prices surging to $150 per barrel.
Qatar has a particularly personal stake in this debate. The country is one of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas exporters, and it has no overland pipeline alternatives for those LNG shipments. Every tanker carrying Qatari gas to Asian and European buyers must transit the Strait.
Why analysts are skeptical of the pipeline bypass
Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline, which can move crude from the Gulf coast to the Red Sea port of Yanbu, has existed in various forms since the 1980s. The UAE’s Habshan-Fujairah pipeline, completed in 2012, allows some Abu Dhabi crude to skip the Strait entirely by routing it to the emirate of Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman. But these pipelines handle a fraction of the volumes that transit the Strait daily. Scaling them to absorb the full flow, or even a majority of it, would require infrastructure investment measured in the tens of billions of dollars and years of construction.
Iraq’s proposed pipeline expansions face their own complications, including the security environment across transit routes that have historically been vulnerable to sabotage.
Then there’s the LNG problem. LNG requires specialized liquefaction terminals at the point of origin and regasification facilities at the destination. Qatar’s massive LNG trains are built on the coast for a reason: the product ships by sea. No pipeline network under discussion would replace that maritime dependency.
The geopolitical backdrop
Bessent’s comments arrive against a backdrop of escalating US-Iran tensions. Washington has tightened sanctions on Iranian oil exports, and Tehran has periodically signaled its ability to threaten shipping in the Gulf as a form of strategic deterrence.
Al-Kaabi’s rebuttal serves the opposite purpose. By emphasizing the Strait’s continued centrality and warning of $150 oil in a disruption scenario, he’s reinforcing the case for diplomatic caution and multilateral commitment to keeping the waterway open.
What to watch
Current pipeline infrastructure capable of bypassing the Strait can handle only a modest share of the region’s total exports. For Bessent’s two-year timeline to hold, new capacity additions would need to come online at a pace that most energy infrastructure analysts consider unrealistic.
Meanwhile, global LNG demand continues to climb, and Qatar is in the middle of a massive expansion of its North Field production. The country plans to increase LNG output significantly over the coming years, all of which will flow through the Strait.
For energy traders, al-Kaabi’s $150 oil warning is the more actionable data point. It signals that at least one major producing nation views the Strait as irreplaceable on any near-term horizon, and that any serious threat to its operations would trigger a supply shock of historic proportions.
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