Qatar's energy minister Saad Sherida al-Kaabi has pushed back against a claim made by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent earlier this month that the Hormuz strait will be "worthless" within two years.
"Maybe this is his view. [But] I think this is completely wrong," al-Kaabi told the Qatar Economic Forum in New York on 20 September.
"If you look at all the trade that we have through the Hormuz strait ꟷ it cannot be obsolete," he said. "Everything that comes to Iraq, Iran, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain [goes through the strait]. We do have a few countries that have waterways outside the Gulf. But the rest of the countries are all inside the Gulf."
Bessent made his comment about the strait on 1 September, arguing that the waterway would lose its significance as Mideast Gulf states build new pipelines that will help diversify energy exports from the region.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE are the only two Mideast Gulf countries that currently have crude oil pipelines allowing them to bypass the strait.
The UAE is building a second pipeline that will almost double its capacity to bypass the strait, while Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Kuwait have all said they are actively working on plans to expand their capacities to bypass the strait for their oil exports.
But al-Kaabi — who is also the chief executive of state-owned QatarEnergy (QE) — pointed out that the disruption of shipping through the strait is affecting more than just energy.
"The Hormuz strait is not only oil and gas," he said. "It's bringing cars, it's bringing in merchandise. It's bringing in a lot of things that we need for our facilities."
Al-Kaabi described the current crisis in the strait, which was triggered by the US-Iran war in late February, as "unprecedented" for the world.
"To have a complete shutdown of all our oil and gas facilities, petrochemicals and a host of things that we produce, and for all of them to come down to zero in one go is unprecedented," he said. "Not only in Qatar, but in any country that produces oil and gas. This is uncharted territory."
Al-Kaabi said Qatar has received proposals and offers to build gas pipelines through neighbouring countries to ports in Syria, Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Oman to lessen its dependency on the strait. But the government has ultimately decided not go down this route as it would not be technically or economically feasible, given the LNG expansion that is already underway in the country.
"We have decided not to do pipelines. The decision was based on commercial and technical [factors]," he said. "We are only going to be using the strait."
