With the Strait of Hormuz remaining closed, logistics operators are working out how to get consignments to and from Gulf destinations previously served by ports that are now in effect blocked to external traffic. Without extensive state direction, entrepreneurs are opening up new routes and increasing capacity on existing routes.
One immediate beneficiary has been traffic flow on Route 95, which starts from the Saudi town of Alkwifiriah close to the Saudi-Qatari border crossing at Salwa. The route then crosses through the Shaybah oilfield and enters Oman at the Ramlet Khelah border crossing point, which was opened in January 2023. The route had been long in the planning, and its opening was delayed not by the COVID pandemic, but by the engineering difficulties of pushing a highway through the shifting sands of the “Empty Quarter.” The route has cut the travelling time between the start and end points by 16 hours, cutting out the old road across the sand or the necessity of diverting through the UAE with the inevitable delays at customs points.
According to the Oman Public Authority for Special Economic and Free Zones, the value of goods crossing the border almost tripled to $830 million in March, from $300 million in February. The main categories moving through the Ramlet Khelah border crossing point are fertilizers, construction materials, food, medicines, and machinery. One trucking company, Ramool Transportation, told AGBI that it had earned more in March 2026 than in the whole of 2025.
Back in 2021, Oman and Saudi Arabia agreed to set up a joint economic zone twelve miles into Oman to take advantage of the new route and border crossing point. The Special Economic Zone at Al Dhahirah (EZAD) opens for business next year, with a land port to be operated by the Omani integrated logistics company Asyad. But the focus for EZAD will be manufacturing units rather than logistics.
Saudi Arabia Railways is launching five new freight corridors linking West and East coasts (SPA)
Saudi Arabian Railways is developing five new logistics routes, based on a pre-war plan to get traffic off roads and onto the railway. Now it is placing a greater emphasis on improving access from rail hubs at Dammam, Jubail, Ras Al Khair, Al Kharj, and Hail through to Red Sea ports.
The Kingdom will also need to develop further the capacity of the heavily used Northern International Highway Route 85, which stretches from Dammam, through Riyadh, and then along the northern border following the course of the old Trans-Arabian Pipeline to Al Hadithah on the Jordanian border. With the civil war in Syria largely over, the route can now be used with much greater facility through to Tartus and Latakia on the Mediterranean. Considered historically to be something of a death-trap, the route is now a continuous dual highway engineered to modern standards.
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Shipping companies are also looking to offer combined sea and land routes. MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company is launching a new service from Antwerp in May 2026, which will ship to Jeddah and King Abdullah Port on the Red Sea, container transfer to trucks to Dammam on the East coast, and then use of feeder services to move freight further forward to Jebel Ali, Khalifa Industrial Zone, and other ports within the Gulf.
Hapag-Lloyd is also launching overland options via Saudi Arabia and Oman.
The main challenge to developing new logistic routes has been a shortage of trucks and drivers, a problem which no doubt will be solved quickly by the attractions of winning extra revenues for those already in the business. The other major issue is the throughput capacity of the ports now being brought into the new logistics networks. Both Khor Fakkan and Fujairah have limited capacity, with Khor Fakkan never having operated at more than three million TEUs in comparison to Jebel Ali’s 25 million TEUs. Both Sohar and Salalah are efficient port operations, with Salalah being ranked as the second most efficient container port in the world in 2023. But both ports are suffering capacity issues, which will take considerably longer to solve than the lack of trucks and drivers.
