Israel and several Gulf countries are holding talks to promote alternative solutions for exporting oil and gas through routes that bypass the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, Hayom reports

Israel and several Gulf countries are holding talks to promote alternative solutions for exporting oil and gas through routes that bypass the Strait of Hormuz and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, Hayom reports.

Talks of this kind surface periodically whenever tension around the Strait of Hormuz or the Red Sea rises, and the historical pattern is that such alternative-route schemes take years to build out and rarely displace the chokepoints they are designed to circumvent, since the volumes that transit Hormuz exceed what any pipeline or land route has ever absorbed. The distinction that matters is between near-term insurance, where rerouting and freight costs reprice, and long-dated infrastructure ambition, which does not. The actors here are familiar: Israel has previously pursued east-west energy corridors with Gulf partners, and Gulf producers have existing bypass capacity to the Red Sea and Fujairah that has been drawn on in past episodes of strait disruption. The tell for whether this is more than diplomatic signalling is whether it attaches to concrete throughput commitments, financing, or new construction rather than dialogue. In prior episodes, crude's geopolitical premium has responded to actual flow disruption and tanker insurance costs, not to announcements of bypass intent, which tend to fade from pricing within sessions. Worth watching is any parallel movement in war-risk premia and shipping rates through the affected straits, which is where stress has historically shown up first.