DP World is accelerating facilities at Fujairah designed to bypass the Strait of Hormuz, Lloyd's List Intelligence reported in its Hormuz brief of 19 August. Cargo is being rerouted through Fujairah, Khor Fakkan, Oman and a Jeddah land bridge, meaning a leg of the journey moved overland between ports. The brief gives no completion date for the works and no capacity figure.1
Fujairah and Khor Fakkan sit on the Gulf of Oman side, outside the strait, which is the whole point of building there. A Jeddah land bridge, though, puts cargo onto the Red Sea approaches, where Mocha suspended all operations this month. One detour is only as good as the sea at the far end of it.
The same brief carried a second finding: at least four VLGCs (very large gas carriers, the bulk ships of the gas trade) with histories of carrying Iranian LPG (liquefied petroleum gas, the bottled-gas feedstock) have loaded mainstream Middle East Gulf cargoes in recent weeks, and the vessels are not themselves sanctioned. Both findings come from that one document, and neither corroborates the other. Read separately, each describes capital or tonnage moving to a position that only pays off if the disruption lasts.
A port investment has a decade of life in it, yet the closure is still discussed as a phase to be got through. Four ships that spent the pre-war years on Iranian barrels are now loading mainstream Gulf cargoes, in the same weeks that Abu Dhabi shut its trade and financial channels to Iran. Pressure is redirecting tonnage rather than idling it, and a carrier that changes trade takes years to change back. Twelve protection and indemnity clubs cancelled and then rebought regional war-risk cover inside three days last week, pricing the strait one voyage at a time. Fujairah prices it by the decade.
