The US and Gulf states are eyeing a USD 10 bn Hormuz bypass fund

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WHAT WE’RE TRACKING TODAY

TODAY: Washington proposes fund for Gulf energy rebuild + Pan-African link with InstaPay aims to ease cross-border trade

Good morning, wonderful people. It’s a morning of money moving into new corridors: pipelines, payments, and one Gulf giant's balance sheet.

There's now a price on the war's infrastructure damage: The Trump administration has proposed committing USD 5 bn to a new fund to rebuild damaged energy infrastructure and build pipelines and terminals around Hormuz. Eight Gulf and regional governments would be asked to match it, bringing the total to USD 10 bn — though nobody has signed anything yet.

Meanwhile, AfreximBank is clearing a path for Egypt's trade with the rest of Africa. The bank plans to connect its Pan-African Payment and Settlement System to Egypt's InstaPay app, and six Egyptian banks have already applied to the CBE for final approval. The point: Egyptian traders settling with African counterparts in local currencies instead of routing everything through a correspondent bank in USD.

Aramco, for its part, is quietly rearranging its own furniture. The state giant is reorganizing to create a standalone gas division — the kind of structure that tends to precede a minority listing, if Aramco ever decides it wants fresh capital that way.

Cracks are already showing in Iran's air links: Oman and Azerbaijan have suspended all Iranian flights into their countries after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent's warning that Iranian airlines would be shut down worldwide from Wednesday, while Iraq has banned Iranian flights into Baghdad specifically. Not everyone is complying, though: at least half a dozen flights bound for China, Thailand, and Afghanistan were still in the air early Wednesday, with at least seven more heading to Istanbul, Bloomberg reports.

We’re honored to have Ahmed Ali Abdelrahman join us as a guest speaker at the 2026 EnterpriseAM Egypt Forum — the AI edition.

Ahmed Ali Abdelrahman is a private equity and investment banking executive with over 30 years of experience across Egypt and the GCC, with a track record spanning deal origination, IPO and M&A execution, and building direct-investment platforms from the ground up. He currently serves as Managing Director and CEO of Post For Investment (PFI), where he oversees a c. EGP 17 bn (USD 340 mn) direct-investment portfolio and structured the firm’s first landmark exit in 2024. Previously, as Group Deputy CEO and CIO of Beltone Financial, he launched three new lending verticals, building an aggregate portfolio of EGP 2 bn within three years.

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Great white north, meet XRG

Adnoc’s International investment arm XRG is evaluating a potential stake in Shell’s LNG Canada export project, Bloomberg reports, citing people it says are familiar with the matter. The firm discussed with existing project backers buying a portion of their holdings, including PetroChina. Ongoing talks are preliminary and may not result in a final transaction, the sources said.

About the project: LNG Canada launched the British Columbia export facility last year — a roughly CAD 40 bn first phase with an annual capacity of 14 mn tons — backed by Chinese, Malaysian, Japanese, and Korean investors. The project’s second phase could secure approval as soon as next month, Reuters reported last week, citing unnamed sources. PetroChina was reportedly seeking to offload a portion of its shares to finance the planned expansion last July.

All part of the plan? XRG set its sights on upstream gas M&A and LNG moves in Canada and the US last year to expand its regional footprint, according to its board-approved five-year plan to reach a target of 20-25 mn tons per annum (mtpa) in capacity by 2035. Adnoc CEO of Upstream Musabbeh Al Kaabi said in June that the company is mulling investments in Canada, adding that XRG is interested in the country’s upstream and LNG sectors.

More global each year: XRG has been establishing a global platform backed by its parent firm’s USD 150 bn capex budget through 2030, targeting a top-five global position in gas and petrochemicals. The company has made several acquisitions in international projects over the past year, including in Venezuela, the US, Argentina, and Azerbaijan. The company is also eyeing potential investments in Australia.

Save the date (again): AD Ports settles tomorrow

AD Ports Group’s buyout by L’imad is settling two weeks earlier than flagged, with L’imad’s ADQ set to hold 98.93% of the company once the transaction closes this Friday, according to a bourse filing (pdf). ADQ satisfied all conditions for its AED 6.25-a-share offer, the disclosure says, pulling settlement — including payment and share transfer — forward to 25 September from the previous 9 October deadline set earlier this month.

REMEMBER- We reported last week that ADQ’s tender offer secured 23.08% of AD Ports Group, building on its existing 75.42% stake to lift total ownership past 98.50% — clearing the 90%+1% threshold required under UAE takeover rules to force out remaining shareholders. The disclosure puts the final count a touch higher at 98.93%, without clarifying.

What’s next: The accelerated settlement date moves up the next deadline too. ADQ has 60 days from settlement to apply for a mandatory acquisition of the remaining 1.07% stake in AD Ports Group. Watch for a squeeze-out notice sometime soon, followed by a challenge period, after which a delisting will likely take place.

Market watch

Oil prices eased this morning as Iran signaled openness to diplomacy, despite a US-Iran deadlock, Reuters reports. Brent crude futures dipped USD 0.92 to USD 102.16 / bbl by 04.00 GMT, while West Texas Intermediate (WTI) dipped USD 0.77 to USD 91.39 / bbl.

The Baltic Index edges down: The Baltic Exchange’s dry bulk index — which tracks rates for the capesize, panamax, and supramax vessel segments — was up 0.1% to 3,430 points on Wednesday. The capesize index dipped 0.5% to 5,861 points, while the panamax index rose 1.5% to 2,333 points. The smaller supramax index inched up 0.1% to 1,778 points.

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Washington and eight Gulf capitals are weighing a USD 10 bn fund to route oil and gas around Hormuz

The Trump administration has proposed committing USD 5 bn to a new fund that would rebuild war-damaged energy infrastructure and build pipelines and terminals to move Gulf oil and gas around Hormuz, the Wall Street Journal reports. Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Iraq, and Jordan would together contribute another USD 5 bn, bringing the proposed fund to USD 10 bn — though talks are ongoing and terms, including whether all eight governments sign on, could still change.

Behind the price tag: Iranian strikes have hit refineries, oil fields, pipelines, and gas export infrastructure across the region. The fund would need to rebuild the damaged infrastructure and develop new routes around Hormuz. Building that capacity before a peace agreement with Tehran could be premature, as new pipelines and terminals could become fresh targets for Iranian drones and missiles. “USD 10 bn is small change relative to the Gulf’s infrastructure needs. Individual LNG terminals or major pipeline expansions can run into the bns. Therefore, the fund’s main purpose is likely to be de-risking projects, attracting capital, and signaling US commitment,” John Calabrese, an assistant professor at the American University in Washington, DC, tells EnterpriseAM.

Resilience needs more than a pipe: A diversified system would have to extend beyond pipelines to storage, terminals, spare capacity, and overlapping routes, Amandeep Kaur Ahuja, MENA Geopolitical Risk Consultant & Researcher, tells EnterpriseAM. Saudi Arabia’s East-West Pipeline shows both sides of that equation: it gave Riyadh a way around Hormuz for years — until an attack this month temporarily knocked the route offline.

Avoid the single-hit failure: Hardening fixed assets has diminishing returns against precision drones and missiles, Calabrese says. A better approach may be to spread critical infrastructure so that no single strike can disable an entire system, while improving the ability to quickly repair and replace damaged equipment, he adds.

Saudi and the UAE built their workarounds, and found their limits

Case in point: The roughly 1.2k km East-West Pipeline moves crude from the Kingdom's eastern producing regions to Yanbu on the Red Sea, with a capacity of around 7 mn bbl / d. Around 4 mn bbl / d had been moving through the system before this month’s attack shut the line down and pushed Aramco toward Gulf exports and Hormuz. Aramco resumed pumping at a reduced rate on Tuesday and is preparing to restart Yanbu exports, but full restoration could still take six to eight weeks, Reuters reported.

A stronger starting point: Adnoc’s Habshan-Fujairah pipeline can move up to 1.8 mn bbl / d from Abu Dhabi’s oil fields directly to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman, bypassing Hormuz entirely, and a parallel pipeline under construction would lift total bypass capacity to roughly 3.3 mn bbl / d by 2027. “The UAE’s pursuit to expand the Habshan pipeline is likely to be beneficial because the existing network has already proven to be successful as the additional pipeline allows the network to embody the pre-war supply of UAE oil through Hormuz,” Ahuja adds.

Not a full fix, though: Only Murban crude runs directly through the Habshan-Fujairah pipeline. Other Adnoc grades — including Upper Zakum, Umm Lulu, and Das crude — are still loaded from facilities inside Hormuz. Adnoc has therefore relied on shuttle tankers to move barrels through the strait before transferring them to larger vessels outside the Gulf, allowing buyers to collect cargoes without sending their own ships into the chokepoint.

Qatar, Kuwait, and Iraq have no equivalent escape route

Not an equal split: Kuwait and Qatar stand to gain most directly from physical infrastructure that opens up new supply and export routes, Ahuja says, while Saudi Arabia and the UAE could participate partly as financial investors in projects beyond their own borders.

The harder case: Iranian strikes knocked two of Ras Laffan’s 14 LNG trains offline, removing around 12.8 mtpa of capacity — roughly 17% of Qatar’s LNG capacity — for an expected three to five years, and the delays are now threatening parts of the North Field expansion too. Even a rebuilt Ras Laffan doesn’t solve the geography: Qatar’s LNG still has to leave through Hormuz, and QatarEnergy CEO Saad Al Kaabi has pushed back on the idea that Doha could pipe gas elsewhere and liquefy it outside the Gulf.

Kuwait’s exposure: No pipeline reaches a coast outside Hormuz — the routes through Saudi Arabia and the UAE the country discussed remain prospective — and Kuwait Petroleum Corporation has said it could restore around 70% of production within six to eight weeks of a full Hormuz reopening. “For countries like Qatar and Kuwait, increasing GCC-wide cooperation to allow for the expansion of infrastructure spending especially in energy may be the key,” Ahuja tells us.

Iraq’s stopgap: Baghdad is trucking fuel oil through Syria's Baniyas port and has authorized talks over converting that corridor into a pipeline. The planned USD 4.6 bn Basra-Haditha line, by contrast, is designed for roughly 2.25 mn bbl / d — which could depend on cooperation between Iraq and Turkey and on disputes that have disrupted flows before, Ahuja adds.

The bottom line: “In the absence of a peace process, asset vulnerability will always remain. Enhanced security measures can reduce the risk but not eliminate it, as we have seen during the Iran War. The Saudi Arabia example is a perfect look at how more assets mean more vulnerability... pipelines and stations that come up as an answer to the vulnerabilities created by this war will need to run at the same scale as the Strait of Hormuz to ensure more revenues; if not, it will always remain the preferred route of export,” Ahuja notes.

Egypt moves a step closer to settling African trade without the USD detour

The African Export-Import Bank (AfreximBank) is planning to connect its Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS) to Egypt’s InstaPay app, and six Egyptian banks have already applied to the Central Bank of Egypt (CBE) for final integration approval, PAPSS CEO Mike Ogbalu said on the sidelines of a conference in Cairo earlier this month. The link-up would let Egyptian traders settle with African counterparts in local currencies rather than relying on USD, cutting the cost and time it currently takes to route a payment through a correspondent bank. The launch timeline and names of the banks that applied were not disclosed.

SOUND SMART- Launched in 2022, the PAPSS platform facilitates cross-border payments under the African Continental Freetrade Area (AfCFTA). AfreximBank provides settlement guarantees and overdraft facilities to settlement agents. The goal is to cut the cost and time of cross-border payments, reduce liquidity requirements for commercial banks, and strengthen central bank oversight. The system now runs across nearly 30 African nations, covering over 200 commercial banks, fintechs, and payment service providers, and connects to 16 domestic payment switches. The CBE agreed to join in November 2024.

Mechanically, here's the shift: An Egyptian importer paying a counterparty in, say, Kenya, currently routes that payment through a correspondent bank using the USD as a middleman — adding cost, delay, and dollar demand at every stage, senior economist and macro analyst Islam Magdy explains to EnterpriseAM. PAPSS skips that detour. “The payer can initiate the transaction in their domestic currency while the beneficiary receives the equivalent value in their local currency, subject to the participating institutions and applicable FX arrangements,” digital economy expert Mai Hegazi tells us.

The trade backdrop: Egypt signed the AfCFTA back in 2018, and the treaty entered into force in May 2019. Actual trading started in October 2022 with the AfCFTA Guided Trade Initiative. Egypt is also a member of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) and has ratified the Tripartite Freetrade Area — the agreement linking Comesa, the East African Community, and the Southern African Development Community — which came into force in July 2024. The country became a member of Brics in 2024.

What Egypt stands to gain

Egypt runs a trade surplus of around USD 3.2 bn with PAPSS member countries — a sharp contrast to the deficits it runs with its top trade partners, including China (c. USD 18 bn), the US (c. USD 10 bn), the GCC (c. USD 3.1 bn), and Europe (c. USD 700 mn), according to trademap data compiled by Magdy and shared with us. At a moment when Egypt needs every foreign currency inflow it can get, removing friction from one of the few trading relationships already tilted in its favor “has a strategic value that exceeds its current absolute size,” he says.

By the numbers: Egypt accounted for 4.35% of intra-African trade in 2025, reaching around USD 9.59 bn — about 46% growth from its 2022 total of USD 6.57 bn, according to AfreximBank’s African Trade Report 2026 (pdf). Its main export markets on the continent were Algeria, Libya, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia, while its import sources were the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. The country’s top exports to the continent were cement and construction materials, plastics, and milled products. Its main imports were copper, fuel and mineral oils, and agricultural commodities, the report shows.

The scale caveat: Egypt’s trade with PAPSS member countries is around USD 3.9 bn in exports — under 8% of Egypt’s total exports, Magdy notes. Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia account for over two-thirds of that sum, and these North African countries already have functional settlement channels. That makes the near-term window narrower than the Sub-Saharan growth story PAPSS is usually framed around, he says.

Will this loosen Egypt’s dependence on the greenback? The short answer is no. PAPSS reduces the need for USD as an intermediary, but “it does not eliminate the USD’s role in global trade, reserves, international pricing, or financial markets,” Hegazi explains. It also doesn’t affect the country’s FX balance, since “the real impact is on transaction costs and settlement speed, not on the FX balance,” Magdy adds.

Where this goes from here

Egypt carries outsized weight in this rollout: As one of the largest economies in the PAPSS network, how the InstaPay integration works “could influence how the system is calibrated for other large economies joining later,” Magdy says. The commercial prospect goes beyond transactions to the banking layer around them: trade finance, FX, liquidity management, supply-chain finance, and cross-border collections, Hegazi says.

For now, though: “PAPSS addresses payment friction — it does not address commercial risk, credit risk, or country risk. An exporter still needs confidence they will get paid, and an importer still needs access to trade finance,” Magdy concludes.

Aramco is splitting off its gas business into a separate division as it explores a minority float

Aramco is splitting off a standalone gas unit: The state oil giant is reorganizing to create a standalone gas division — a structure that could eventually support a minority listing to raise fresh capital, Reuters reports, citing two people familiar with the plans.

The restructuring: Aramco would carve gas out of its upstream and downstream businesses, giving the new unit its own president. That would create a dedicated platform to develop domestic gas, expand overseas LNG, and explore capital-raising options such as further lease-and-leaseback agreements.

Why it matters: A standalone gas division would give Aramco a ring-fenced asset it can open to outside investors without exposing its core upstream oil business. Gulf state oil companies have increasingly used this model to bring in capital while retaining control of their core operations. UAE’s Adnoc, for example, has listed minority stakes in its gas, drilling, and retail-fuel businesses. Both Adnoc and Aramco have also raised bns through transactions involving their oil and gas pipeline assets.

REMEMBER- Aramco has already used that playbook on Jafurah. A BlackRock GIP-led consortium invested USD 11 bn in Jafurah’s gas-processing infrastructure last year through a lease-and-leaseback agreement. The assets were placed in Jafurah Midstream Gas Company, with Aramco retaining 51% and the investor group taking 49%, before being leased back to Aramco for 20 years. Jafurah began operating last year and is potentially the largest unconventional gas field outside the US, holding an estimated 230 tcf.

Syria, Iraq agree to link their customs systems at border crossings

Syria and Iraq have agreed to digitally link their customs systems at border crossings, Syrian state news agency Sana reported. The two sides agreed to digitally link Syrian and Iraqi customs systems, streamlining procedures, improving data sharing, and speeding up transactions to facilitate trade and ease transit flows.

Iraq and Syria have three official crossings: Al Qaim-Abu Kamal crossing (open since June 2025), as well as Al Tanf-Waleed and Yarubiyah-Rabia crossings, both reopened last April as Iraq rushed to move crude overland to Syrian ports as a reroute around Hormuz. Similarly, on the Turkish side of the border, five crossings are currently being upgraded to accommodate growing trade flows, estimated at 17% y-o-y during the first seven months of 2026.

GO DEEPER- For years, Syria served as the region’s fastest, most cost-effective and heavily used land corridor between Europe and neighboring markets. The conflict effectively shut that route down, allowing Jordan to become a key intermodal transit hub instead. Last March, we looked at Syria’s potential to reclaim that role as the conflict draws to a close — and the infrastructure, security, and other obstacles that could get in the way.

Calendar

16-17 September (Wednesday-Thursday): Saudi Maritime & Logistics Congress, Dammam, Saudi Arabia.

22-23 September (Tuesday-Wednesday): Breakbulk Americas, Houston, US.

22-24 September (Tuesday-Thursday): Seamless Middle East, Dubai, UAE.

28-30 September (Monday-Wednesday): Transport Logistics Middle East, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

OCTOBER

12-14 October (Monday-Wednesday): The Airport Show, Dubai, UAE.

20-22 October (Tuesday-Thursday): TOC Americas, Cartagena, Colombia.

21-22 October (Wednesday-Thursday): Global Ports Forum, Singapore.

26-29 (Monday-Thursday): Air Cargo Forum, Miami, US.

27-29 October (Tuesday-Thursday): Routes World, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

NOVEMBER

2-5 November (Monday-Thursday): ADIPEC Maritime and Logistics Exhibition and Conference, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

10-11 November (Tuesday-Wednesday): TOC Asia, Singapore.

10-12 November (Tuesday-Thursday): Intermodal Europe, Rotterdam, Netherlands.

11-13 November (Wednesday-Friday): Logitrans, Istanbul, Turkey.

18-19 November (Wednesday-Thursday): Breakbulk Asia, Singapore.

FEBRUARY 2027

10-12 February (Wednesday-Friday): Routes Americas, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

MARCH 2027

16-18 March (Tuesday-Thursday): CMA Shipping, Houston, US.

16-18 March (Tuesday-Thursday): Routes Asia, New Delhi, India.

APRIL 2027

20-22 April (Tuesday-Thursday): Routes Europe, Antalya, Turkey.

26-29 April (Monday-Thursday): Transport Logistic and air cargo Europe, Munich, Germany.

26-29 April (Monday-Thursday): Saudi Smart Logistics, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

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