Panorama of Haifa Bay (Shutterstock)
Gulf Arab states look to Israel’s port of Haifa as part of an alternative energy shipping route as Iran continues its closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
By World Israel News Staff
Gulf Arab states are mulling a plan to open an alternative route for oil exports that could rely on a strategically important Israeli port on the Mediterranean Sea, the Financial Times reported.
The long-delayed plans for an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz, which prior to the current war with Iran was used for the export of roughly a quarter of the world’s oil supply, call for pipelines, rail links, and road corridors to reduce global reliance on the Persian Gulf chokepoint.
While a number of options are on the table for a land-based route for moving oil from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean, the US has for years backed a plan to create a broad “economic corridor” from India to Western Europe, running through Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Israel.
The planned route, dubbed the India–Middle East–Europe Economic Corridor, or IMEC, would utilize the Israeli port of Haifa to handle energy shipments to Europe and the Western Hemisphere.
Other iterations of the plan center on a broader approach that goes beyond a single pipeline: officials and industry figures are reportedly looking at an integrated network of pipelines, railways and roads that could give Gulf exporters a land bridge to western ports and reduce Iran’s leverage over seaborne traffic out of the Gulf.
The proposed route from the Gulf to Haifa is not the only one under consideration.
Saudi Arabia already has a pipeline from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea, from Jubail to Yanbu, spanning 1,200 kilometers (750 miles).
The Kirkuk–Ceyhan oil pipeline already links northern Iraq to the Mediterranean via the Port of Ceyhan in Turkey.
Neither of these routes, however, could fully replace the Strait of Hormuz as an exit point for exported oil.
But any Haifa-linked corridor would likely require Saudi buy-in, sustained regional security cooperation, and would force Arab governments to balance immediate commercial needs against domestic and regional sensitivities around overt infrastructure links involving Israel.
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