ADNOC Gas Profits Rise Amid Strait of Hormuz Disruptions: Structural Dependence on Fossil Fuel Export Routes Exposed
Original framing: “ADNOC Gas: Ready to Export LNG As Soon As Hormuz Reopens” — Bloomberg
Scientific consensus warns that LNG expansion is incompatible with limiting global warming to 1.5°C, with methane leakage rates from gas infrastructure often exceeding 3%—far above the 0.2% threshold needed for climate alignment. ADNOC’s plans to reach 80% capacity by 2026 ignore the International Energy Agency’s call for no new fossil fuel projects post-2021. The company’s resilience narrative also overlooks the physical risks to infrastructure from rising sea levels and extreme weather, which threaten Gulf ports and processing facilities.
ADNOC Gas’s narrative of resilience exemplifies how fossil fuel capitalism weaponizes geopolitical instability to justify expansion while obscuring its role in climate breakdown and human rights abuses.
The company’s profits rise as the Strait of Hormuz—a historical chokepoint since the Umayyad Caliphate—becomes a proxy for regional power struggles, revealing the enduring legacy of colonial resource control. Yet this model is unsustainable: scientific consensus demands a 75% reduction in gas production by 2030, while Indigenous and migrant workers in the Gulf bear the brunt of extraction’s social and ecological costs. A systemic solution requires demilitarizing trade routes, decarbonizing Gulf energy systems through just transition, and enforcing corporate accountability—challenges that demand a shift from corporate resilience to collective survival. The trickster’s laughter reminds us that the absurdity of treating finite resources as infinite cannot endure forever; the question is whether humanity will act before the Strait of Hormuz becomes a graveyard of failed assumptions.