© REUTERS / Ahmed Jadallah
The situation in the region has been strained following a series of incidents involving Iran, the US, and UK, leading to transit through the Strait of Hormuz being considered unsafe. Several countries have already called for safety of navigation to be ensured through the vital oil shipping lane.
Saudi Arabia is
planning to boost the output capacity by 40% of a pipeline belonging to state oil company Saudi Aramco that runs from the country's east to the Red Sea coast in the west by 2021, Energy Minister Khalid al-Falih told Reuters. The move comes in response to the situation in the Strait of Hormuz, with Saudi Arabia aiming to reroute some of its oil exports from the waterway to the port of Yanbu on the shore of the Red Sea.
The pipeline's current capacity is five million barrels per day, but the country plans to increase it to seven million. The minister believes
the expansion will take around two years, but an anonymous source in the industry told
Bloomberg that it could be completed
as early as September 2019. But even without an expansion, the pipeline is working below its maximum capacity, leaving Saudi Aramco with space to manoeuvre.
Comment: Step by slow step, the multi-polar world is constructing itself. When will the West wake up to its growing irrelevancy?