Crude flow through Fujairah rose from 1.17 mbpd in February to 1.62 mbpd by late March1, a 38% increase that puts the port within reach of the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline (ADCOP) design ceiling of 2 mbpd. Khor Fakkan container handling went from 2,000 to 50,000 vessels per week, a 25-fold rise; six container ships were berthed and ten waiting on the day of the report.
Fujairah and Khor Fakkan sit on the United Arab Emirates' eastern coast, on The Gulf of Oman side of the Strait of Hormuz. ADCOP runs 370 km from Habshan, a terminal in Abu Dhabi's interior, to Fujairah, bypassing the strait entirely. When Hormuz is closed or contested, every barrel that previously sailed out of The Persian Gulf has to find another route, and the two UAE eastern ports are the alternative.
That alternative is running out of room. ADCOP's 2 mbpd design ceiling has never been tested at sustained throughput. Pipeline infrastructure operating near design capacity under conflict-zone threat generates compressor and metering stress that maintenance schedules cannot absorb on a normal cycle; real-world ceiling likely sits 200,000 to 300,000 bpd below the published figure. The 1.62 mbpd reading leaves perhaps 80,000 to 180,000 bpd of usable headroom before the pipeline starts forcing maintenance trade-offs. Khor Fakkan's congestion is sharper still: a 25-fold rise in a year cannot be absorbed by adding berths on a weeks-to-months timeline.
The United Arab Emirates (UAE) foreign ministry has not commented directly on the legal pressure. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) published a map on 5 May claiming maritime control zones along the UAE's eastern coastline, the legal escalation that followed the 4 May physical drone strike on the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone. The pattern is kinetic-then-legal: strike a target, then claim sovereignty over the water above it. International maritime law gives the IRGC's coastline claim no recognised standing, yet the 4 May drone strike demonstrated kinetic reach over the same water. If insurance markets price the legal claim, the bypass route's effective capacity falls before its physical capacity does.
A signed MOU would reopen Hormuz and end the toll system, taking the kinetic-then-legal pattern off the board. If Tehran's reply collapses against the 9 May expiry, the 380,000 bpd nominal headroom at Fujairah becomes the constraint that matters: the next significant Hormuz incident exhausts the surface alternative, and crude that cannot move by pipeline or by Khor Fakkan stays unloaded.
