Can America Bypass Hormuz?

Map highlighting the Strait of Hormuz and surrounding regions

Trump’s claim that Texas and Alaska can replace the Strait of Hormuz turns a real high‑stakes pipeline push into a deeply misleading promise about America’s energy security.

Story Snapshot

Trump backs a plan with Iraq and Syria to revive the Kirkuk–Baniyas pipeline to bypass the Strait of Hormuz.
Existing Middle East pipelines can move less than half of the oil that normally goes through Hormuz.
No pipeline from Texas or Alaska connects to the Persian Gulf, making “alternatives to Hormuz” from U.S. soil physically impossible.
The fight over Hormuz exposes a deeper problem both parties see: leaders promise easy fixes while the global system stays fragile.

Trump’s New Pipeline Push And His Hormuz Claims

President Trump has promoted the United States as the “guardian of the Strait of Hormuz,” at one point calling for a 20 percent charge on cargo moving through the waterway to pay for protection. At the same time, his team has backed talks with Iraq and Syria to revive the historic Kirkuk–Baniyas oil pipeline, a roughly 500‑mile route from northern Iraq to Syria’s Mediterranean coast, aimed at bypassing Hormuz and shrinking Iran’s leverage over global oil flows. These steps let Trump claim he is both policing the strait and building ways around it.

Reports from regional outlets say Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al‑Zaidi is expected to present a pipeline agreement during his mid‑July White House visit, though the plan is still at the memorandum stage and would require near‑total rebuilding of pipes, pumps, and other systems. The old line, built in the 1950s and later damaged in wars, once carried about 300,000 barrels a day but has been shut for decades. Rebuilding is estimated to take two to three years and cost billions of dollars, with a possible United States investment role.

What Middle East Pipelines Can Really Do

Gulf producers have already built several pipelines that move oil around Hormuz instead of through it, including Saudi Arabia’s East‑West line to the Red Sea and the United Arab Emirates’ Habshan–Fujairah line to the Arabian Sea. Analysts quoted by Reuters and others say these routes, plus planned expansions and Iraq’s possible Mediterranean outlet, could together handle around 9 million barrels per day, which is helpful but still short of the roughly 20 million barrels that pass through Hormuz in normal times. This gap shows why experts insist that current bypass projects cannot fully replace the strait.

Energy specialists warn that building enough capacity to truly match Hormuz flows would demand many large pipelines, huge upfront costs, and at least a decade of work. One widely shared estimate points to around $40–60 billion and 10–12 years to construct a full parallel network of very large lines across the region, assuming financing and politics cooperate. On top of that, land pipelines sit within range of Iranian missiles and drones, which means they are exposed to many of the same security risks that tankers face inside the strait itself. This undercuts talk of any simple “escape route” from Middle East tensions.

Why Texas And Alaska Cannot Replace Hormuz

Trump’s suggestion that oil from Texas or Alaska could serve as “alternatives” to the Strait of Hormuz taps into a long‑running narrative that the United States can solve global chokepoint problems with domestic energy production. In reality, American oil pipelines end at United States ports on the Gulf of Mexico and other coasts and do not connect by pipe to the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, or Mediterranean export hubs. Because the Strait of Hormuz is a narrow passage between Iran and Oman that sits thousands of miles away, no United States pipeline can physically bypass it or replace the shipping routes tied to it.

The Gulf states would be foolish to invest in the US simply because Trump wants them to. They would be better off investing in their own pipelines and infrastructure to avoid the Strait of Hormuz. With the additional revenue from oil, they could better strengthen their defenses.

— lizocs (@lizocs1) July 15, 2026

Independent energy analysts across outlets like Forbes and Al Jazeera stress that bypass pipelines today cover far less than 30 percent of Hormuz’s normal oil flows and that no credible study or project links Texas or Alaska infrastructure to Hormuz‑side exports. Their view is that claims about United States pipelines serving as direct substitutes are “commercially not viable” and geographically incoherent, given how global tanker routes and regional ports are laid out. This clash between political messaging and physical reality feeds the wider sense among conservatives and liberals that leaders sell slogans while ignoring hard math and geography.

Deeper Fragility And The Shared Anger At “Elites”

Research on geopolitical risk shows energy systems react sharply to crises, with oil and gas markets especially sensitive to external shocks. The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s biggest pressure points, and every new threat there quickly moves prices, hurts family budgets, and deepens public anger at what many see as a distant “deep state” that protects its own interests first. When presidents float ideas like tolls on sea lanes or miracle pipeline fixes that experts immediately question, it reinforces the belief on both the right and the left that elites are improvising rather than following a serious long‑term plan.

Global agencies such as the International Energy Agency say the world is slowly shifting toward cleaner energy, but oil will remain central for years, keeping chokepoints like Hormuz crucial. That means Americans will stay exposed when far‑off regions flare up, unless leaders confront the hard trade‑offs: how much to invest in real alternative routes, how quickly to reduce oil dependence, and how to protect ordinary people from price spikes. The gap between confident political claims and the limited capacity of projects like Kirkuk–Baniyas is exactly the kind of disconnect that fuels today’s cross‑party frustration with the federal government.