This may be a really dumb question but with all the money the UAE seems to have (Dubai), would it be feasible or even beneficial to build their own “Panama Canal” from say Dubai straight east to the Gulf of Oman just bypassing the Straight of Hormuz altogether?
We could sign over control of the Straight to Iran and then just negotiate with UAE to use the canal.
I think it would be a lot cheaper to build several pipelines instead.
For one reason, if you are talking about a canal crossing the peninsula which separates the Persian Gulf from the Gulf of Oman, much of the eastern part of that peninsula is mountainous, which would make the engineering challenge, and the cost, much higher.
ETA: I type too much too slowly.
There’s a ridge of mountains along the peninsular axis. Gonna be expensive to cut a channel through them. Probably not engineering impossible, but perhaps financially impossible. Remember: the measure of merit is not “Does UAE have the cash to build this as a boondoggle?” It’s “Can UAE build and operate this thing at a profit, recouping the cost of construction over a reasonable timespan?”
Second issue is that Iran’s missiles can reach a lot more than just the narrowest point of the Strait of Hormuz. Wherever UAE might put their new canal mouths at either end, there will be a pile of ships sitting around in the nearby gulfs of Oman & Persia waiting to use the canal. All of which are well within Iranian missile range.
So a couple decades of digging for what benefit?
One issue I could see is that oil is not the only thing being transported via the Strait of Hormuz. Fertilizer, LNG, clothing, manufactured goods and food are also transported through it.
Perhaps we could resurrect Project Plowshare.
Well, trying to do so wouldn’t make them the first Arabian country to decide digging a giant line would be a fantastic way to squander money. The Line, Saudi Arabia - Wikipedia, or for those who prefer a visual,
But pretty much this. The Persian Gulf isn’t very wide, and Iran has already demonstrated that it can hit targets well inside Saudi Arabia and the UAE with drones. The East–West Crude Oil Pipeline in Saudi Arabia was built in the 1980s because of the Tanker War during the war between Iran and Iraq, but there are two problems with it: it’s already been shut down once by a Houthi drone attack in 2019, and all it does is divert oil into the Red Sea - where Yemen can blockade it.
Which is why there has been talk of extending the pipeline to the Mediterranean - either through Lebanon, or Israel, or both.
UAE has the Habshan–Fujairah oil pipeline that goes through the mountains and bypasses the Strait of Hormuz.
It can transport 1.5M barrels per day (potentially up to 1.8M) while the UAE produces 3.3M - 4M bpd.
It took 3 years to build and cost $3-4B which seems pretty cheap for the value.
This is a good point that I didn’t grok the first time I read it, but not everything can be pushed through a pipeline.
Depends on how high you set the pressure. Anything blends given enough pressure. 
Serious answer: the only stuff that matters to the world that passes through Hormuz is crude oil & LNG. Everything else could be sent overland by truck and would inconvenience the hell out of e.g. Kuwait, but would matter practically zero to the rest of the planet’s economy.
Exactly. The stuff other than crude oil & LNG is only manufactured where it is because it’s conveniently close to the sources of crude oil & LNG. If it is no longer convenient to manufacture there, it could all be manufactured elsewhere if you can get the crude oil & LNG out.
As a rule, when people have to send stuff via your location, it is not an inconvenience it is a goldmine. OK it might be an inconvenience if you actually have to live on the relevant roads, but overall the economic opportunities from the passing trade make up for it.
For another Oman has to be convinced it is worth their while to allow their country to bisected. On the one hand Oman and the UAE generally have pretty good (but definitely not perfect) relations - there have been plenty of joint projects.
On the other hand what’s really in it for Oman to allow such a drastic and insanely long, labor-intensive and disruptive project on their soil when they benefit from bottleneck in the Strait of Hormuz as well. Iran is already courting them with a speculative share of the new concept of Strait of Hormuz tolls. While Oman has denied they’re interested, Iran-Oman relations are also usually quite good. There have been a few strikes on Oman, but the Iranian government has officially disavowed them claiming they were unauthorized.
I don’t doubt the overall conclusion that it ain’t going to happen.
But I don’t think this is the reason. Megaprojects - particularly those funded by overseas investors - tend to be good for the local economy. Employment is good for the local economy. Canals can have bridges over them. After a canal is complete you can charge fees for transit.
Yes Oman may be able to benefit from the bottleneck that is the Strait of Hormuz but they could benefit even more from direct control of a bypass around the bottleneck.
Again, I don’t doubt the whole idea is not feasible, but I don’t think massive investment in a labor intensive mega-infrastructure project in one’s country is likely to be seen as a negative.
UAE already bisects Oman in the Musandam Peninsula. Their pipeline’s egress is in Fujairah City on the Gulf of Oman.
The UAE and Oman have a complicated border. Madha is an Oman enclave inside the UAE and Nahwa is a UAE enclave inside of that.
Looks like UAE has two gas pipelines bypassing Hormuz to Fujairah City as well as pipelines direct to Qatar and Oman.
A complicating factor is that their oil and gas fields are mostly on the west side of the country.
Their fertilizer industry is way down the list so you’re right they could (and maybe will) truck it out.
The OP was an interesting question because even though a canal is not practical, it’s clear that the UAE has been moving towards independence from Hormuz. Wikipedia says they have the most diversified economy of the Gulf Cooperation Council which implies they are generally planning ahead.
duplicating it wouldn’t take so long or cost so much.
No. It’s an insurance policy. You look at this the same as you look at other insurance, not if you can make a profit on it.
While I fully agree w the point you made here in this snip, it doesn’t respond to what I meant. My fault for being too cryptic.
What I meant in the post you were responding to is that in addition to the Crude & LNG transits outbound that the world depends on, the other use of the SoH is simply as an ocean freight channel to bring finished goods from the rest of the world into countries bordering the Persian Gulf. e.g. Kuwait.
And were the SoH to remain closed, e.g. Kuwait would be mightily inconvenienced if all their imported cars and heavy building materials and whatnot had to be offloaded from ocean freighters somewhere in the Gulf of Oman and trucked to Kuwait for distribution. They might even be severely inconvenienced and suffer huge crippling price rises on imported goods. And the punchline: The rest of the world would not care in the slightest.
For world economic purposes all other uses of the SoH are simply immaterial. It’s only outbound crude and LNG that matter. Plus, as you said and I did not, in the short term those immediate petroleum derivative products that are now manufactured in/on the Persian Gulf for convenience. But could be manufactured elsewhere as long as the crude or LNG can get out through the Strait.
Another point to ponder - every time a ship goes up in a canal lock, the lock is filled with water from the upper side of the canal. In many canals (the St. Lawrence Seaway or Erie Canal being examples - there is abundant water sources to provide this as it parallels a river flow. The Panama canal has a conveneint rainforest to supply this water (although at one point a drought threatened its capacity). The Suez is a sea-level to seal-level canal and no locks, but fortunately did not require excavation of significant highlands.
Oddly enough, there’s one thing the Hormuz Bypass lacks, and that’s a water supply. Perhaps, because it’s nothing but desert.
Then there’s the digging. Scroll to the Hormuz area…
This suggests the construction -if sea level - would involve a trench through terrain that seems to get to at least 100m (330ft) most of the way. The most obvious pass through the mountains follows the N7-E44 highway. I assume it wiggles on the route due to going around hills. then there’s the other issues, like what does a saltwater trench do to groundwater/acquifer supplies which in that region I assume are important?
Next consider logisitics. The size of modern tankers - and their maneuverability - is astounding. The main stretch of the Suez is about 86km, and has been twinned much of that way to accommodate traffic (and still had a problem where one failed ship blocked the world’s traffic). A tanker canal would be a significant step above the Erie canal in size and logistics. Suez at least has a lake along the way for trafic to bypass.
I think the Saudi solution is more practical - they have a pipeline to a loading port in the Red Sea, as mentioned earlier. Expanding that would take a load off Hormuz and shorten the European trip.
A further extension of this pipeline to, say, parallel the Suez and load oil east of Alexandria on the Mediterranean might be practical, but the fork in the Red Sea at Sharm el Sheik is a sensitive ecological zone. There’s already massive debate about a plan to build a bridge there. A pipeline with the risk of leaks would be even worse. And going through a constant war zone, or the Arabs giving Israel a choke by routing north of Eilat? Not likely.