ADNOC reportedly informed some Asian refiners that it may begin delivering Upper Zakum crude via a new pipeline to the Fujairah terminal in early 2027, allowing shipments to bypass the disrupted Strait of Hormuz, according to Bloomberg

ADNOC reportedly informed some Asian refiners that it may begin delivering Upper Zakum crude via a new pipeline to the Fujairah terminal in early 2027, allowing shipments to bypass the disrupted Strait of Hormuz, according to Bloomberg.

Gulf producers have long pursued export routes that bypass Hormuz, and each expansion of that infrastructure has tended to shave the geopolitical risk premium embedded in prompt Brent rather than alter outright supply, since the barrels were already reaching market. The distinction worth drawing is between spare pipeline capacity and nameplate: announced routes of this kind have historically run below headline capacity in early operation, and the actual share of flows that can be diverted in a genuine closure is what matters for pricing tail risk. Routing Upper Zakum to Fujairah also shifts the relevant pricing basis toward the Murban and Oman-linked complex that trades off the East coast, which has implications for how Asian refiners hedge and for the relative strength of Middle East grades against Atlantic Basin benchmarks. A 2027 start is distant enough that the immediate read-through is limited; the established pattern is that such announcements matter most as context for how much Hormuz disruption premium the market should carry, not as near-term supply news. Worth watching is confirmation of volumes, which refiners receive allocations, and any parallel moves by other Gulf exporters to expand bypass capacity, since redundancy on one route has historically encouraged the market to fade chokepoint risk faster.