US Treasury Secretary Bessent says Strait of Hormuz will become “another body of water” in 2 years

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent made a bold prediction on August 8: the Strait of Hormuz, one of the most strategically important chokepoints on Earth, will be reduced to “another body of water” within two years. The waterway that currently handles roughly one-fifth of all global oil and gas traffic could lose the majority of its energy throughput to underground pipelines, according to Bessent’s forecast. The pipeline pivot Bessent’s core argument centers on infrastructure. He projects that 50 to 70 percent of the energy currently routed through the Strait of Hormuz will be redirected through underground pipelines over the next two years. Gulf states are already moving fast to make this a reality. Saudi Arabia is pushing ahead with a Red Sea pipeline that would allow crude exports to bypass the strait entirely. The UAE, meanwhile, has been expanding capacity at its Fujairah terminal on the Gulf of Oman, which sits outside the chokepoint and connects to Abu Dhabi’s oil fields via overland pipeline. Rising US-Iran hostilities throughout 2026, combined with military actions and tightened sanctions, have turned theoretical supply disruptions into actual ones. Shipping through the stra...