Sohar

Sohar sits on The Gulf of Oman roughly 220 km north of Muscat, in North Al Batinah governorate. Its al-Awahi Industrial Zone concentrates an aluminium smelter, an oil refinery and port facilities that have expanded fast since 2000 as Oman diversified away from raw oil revenue.

The port's strategic value rose sharply once the Hormuz blockade began: Sohar became a ship-to-ship transfer point letting tankers move blocked Gulf crude without transiting the strait itself. Japan's Mitsui OSK routed the Sohar LNG carrier through Hormuz in early April 2026 after paying Iran's transit toll, illustrating the port's role in the improvised bypass arrangements that grew up around the closure.

On 13 March 2026 a drone struck the al-Awahi Industrial Area, killing two foreign nationals, Oman's first casualties of the regional war. The strike tested Muscat's decades-old neutrality, the backchannel role it has played between Tehran and Washington since the 1979 hostage crisis and used again in the 2015 nuclear deal.