I know we both. come from this industry, but a guess on pipeline construction timing would be WAG for me. A lot depends on terrain, geology of the digging, getting pipe, getting labor, metering and process interphases, design, , and most of important time consuming of all, a construction of new terminal in what might constitute a war zone.
Then 20 miles of real estate through Oman and the Emeriates. I don't know... maybe 6-12 months if permanent construction. Closer to 6 if short cuts are taken, and an ultimate priority is given to the project. Economics? They obviously suck, unless keeping the Strait open long term becomes problematic. Then the obvious opposite.
What's your take?
Well, the Saudis already built a pipeline to the Red Sea, across the peninsula. I have seen claims it cost 7 million a day to operate, and the ships still have to get past the Houthis (Iran proxy) in Yemen. The line consists of two pipelines, one with a 7 million BOPD capacity, the other, if converted from Natural Gas and NGL to crude oil can add another 2MM BOPD to the line' capacity. Advertising it might mean it becomes a target, so any use and traffic would be kept on the down low as much as possible.
All the regional problems here seem to come back to the same source.
The Iranian Regime backed and trained proxies in Lebanon, Yemen, and Gaza (and likely elsewhere, including Syria), and have also worked hand in hand with the Russians to arm them with drones to use against Ukraine.
Pull the problem out by the roots.
For those of us who are not TDS sufferers and against this action because: Trump, and who aren't beholden to some version of Islam, it's pretty obvious that the only way to solve a lot of problems is to stop swatting flies and get rid of the carrion on the doorstep. Otherwise we are treating the symptoms and not the disease. We need to finish what we have started. Unfortunately, the domestic American TDS media is working overtime to publish every negative and blow it out of proportion. Suddenly, the Left half of Congress is wailing to the rooftops over the loss fewer troops than we lost guarding an airport gate in Afghanistan, and fewer aircraft than they gave the Taliban when we pulled out over there.
They seek, desperately, to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, and to use that as a political talking point among their seriously addled supporters (and to get the dead/nonexistent/illegal alien vote, too).
The Saudis do get props for foreseeing this sort of problem and taking proactive steps to still get their product out, but that may be the very reason the Iranian Mullahs backed the Houthis to counter that. As for cost or even effectiveness, this was built in 1980 to bypass the Straits of Hormuz during the Iran/Iraq war during the "Tanker War". What it would cost to build another is something I could not begin to guess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East%E2%80%93West_Crude_Oil_Pipeline#/media/File:East-West_crude_oil_pipeline.svgSee also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habshan%E2%80%93Fujairah_oil_pipelinehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Arabian_Pipeline (much has changed since this one, shut down in 1990)
