Keeping Trade Moving: How the UAE Kept Its Ports Working Through the Hormuz Crisis

When the Strait of Hormuz closed to routine commercial shipping in early March 2026, the question across the maritime industry was simple and urgent: how does trade keep flowing when the waterway that carries a fifth of the world's oil, and the container traffic for half the Gulf, is shut?

Seven months on, the answer in the UAE has been clear — and for anyone who supplies or operates vessels here, it is worth understanding, because it is the reason ships have kept calling, and kept being provisioned, throughout.

A fast pivot to the east coast

The UAE's advantage was geography it had already invested in. The Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline connects onshore oil fields directly to the Fujairah export terminal on the Gulf of Oman — bypassing Hormuz entirely. As the strait closed, the country diverted as much crude as possible through that pipeline to keep shipments going, while ADNOC ran a shuttle operation moving crude from the Arabian Gulf fields to the anchorage off Fujairah for transfer to onward tankers.

Container trade adapted the same way. Abu Dhabi-backed shipping companies began shuttling container cargo using smaller feeder vessels, with Fujairah and Khor Fakkan acting as hubs outside the strait — regional ships handling the crossings, the larger lines connecting from the Gulf of Oman side. Trade did not stop. It moved east.

From emergency measure to national strategy

What makes the response notable is that the UAE did not treat it as a temporary patch. The government has been explicit that the shift is permanent regardless of what happens to the strait — "we're moving toward having zero Hormuz dependency," in the trade minister's words, "and that's regardless of whether it's open or not."

The infrastructure plan backs that up: expansion of Khor Fakkan, Fujairah and Dibba on the Gulf of Oman coast, plus an additional new port. The crisis became the trigger for building out a second, strait-independent maritime gateway for the country.

Why it matters for vessels calling at the UAE

For ship operators, the practical consequence is that the UAE has remained a working, callable destination throughout a disruption that paralysed traffic elsewhere. Vessels have continued to arrive, berth and wait on the east coast, and the support services that keep them running — including provisioning — have continued to function alongside.

It has not been frictionless. The east-coast ports have seen real congestion, with vessel waiting times at Fujairah and Khor Fakkan rising sharply through the year, and the whole industry has had to adapt to delivery windows rather than fixed dates. But the ports stayed open, the cargo kept moving, and crews kept being supplied.

The provisioning angle

For us, the UAE's east-coast pivot has meant one thing above all: the work has moved where the vessels are. More ships calling at and waiting off Fujairah and Khor Fakkan means sustained provisioning demand on the Gulf of Oman coast — and it has put a premium on the ability to hold the cold chain across the distance from Dubai and deliver reliably to berth and anchor.

The country built the infrastructure to keep trade flowing. Our job, through all of it, has been the narrower one: making sure that whatever happens to the shipping lanes, the crews aboard those vessels keep eating well. That has not changed, and it will not.