If you’re an energy company whose exports depend on a narrow waterway that sits at the center of basically every Middle Eastern geopolitical crisis, eventually you start looking at alternatives. ADNOC Gas, the listed gas arm of Abu Dhabi’s state oil giant, is doing exactly that: exploring a new LNG export facility in Fujairah, on the UAE’s eastern coast, which would allow shipments to bypass the Strait of Hormuz entirely.
The initiative, which entered a design competition and bidding phase in June 2026, targets a capacity of 4 million tonnes per annum (mtpa). That’s a meaningful addition for a company that currently runs its LNG operations from Das Island, squarely on the wrong side of the strait from a security perspective.
Why Hormuz matters, and why ADNOC wants to avoid it
ADNOC has already started hedging against this vulnerability on the crude oil side. The company operates the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline, also known as the West-East pipeline, which connects onshore oil fields to the Fujairah export terminal. That pipeline was recently reported to be nearly 50% complete in terms of planned expansion work. A Fujairah-based LNG facility would extend the same geographic logic to gas exports.
