The Strait of Hormuz is the world's most important oil and gas shipping route, carrying around 20 million barrels of crude and oil products every day. It's also home to roughly a fifth of the world's liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports. But since the war in Iran started, the strait has been mostly closed. This has left Gulf states scrambling to find alternative routes to export their oil and gas.

The solution has been to use pipelines that exist outside of the strait. One of these pipelines is in Saudi Arabia, known as the East-West Pipeline or Petroline. It was built in the 1980s to help avoid conflict in the Gulf. However, the pipeline's capacity was recently expanded to 7 million barrels a day, but its loading terminals can't handle such a high volume. Analysts estimate that less oil is flowing through the pipeline than its theoretical capacity.

Another pipeline exists in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), called the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline (Adcop). It goes from Habshan to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman side of the country, but it's been targeted by Iranian drone strikes during the war. While it offers some diversification for the UAE, it doesn't solve the problem entirely. The situation is worse for other Gulf states like Iraq and Kuwait, which have lost millions of barrels of crude exports since the strait closed.

Iraq and Kuwait have been trying to find alternative routes, but their options are limited. Iraq has reopened a northern pipeline that connects oil fields in Kirkuk to Ceyhan in Turkey, but its capacity is just 250,000 barrels a day, which is a tiny fraction of what it used to be. Kuwait has no pipeline alternative and has declared force majeure, allowing it to temporarily suspend its obligations to meet delivery contracts.

Qatar, on the other hand, has a different problem. Its pre-war crude exports were smaller than its Gulf neighbors, but it's a major player in the global LNG market. Its largest LNG capacity is at Ras Laffan, which supplies about 19% of global LNG trade. However, there's no alternative to shipping this gas through the strait. Iran itself has built a Hormuz bypass, but it's not working as planned due to sanctions and unfinished terminal infrastructure.