Salalah: Middle East’s only accessible container port as Hormuz and Red Sea close

The simultaneous closure of the Strait of Hormuz and resumption of Houthi attacks in the Bab el-Mandeb has created an unprecedented twin chokepoint crisis, cutting off the Persian Gulf from global shipping networks. As carriers execute full regional withdrawals and war-risk insurers cancel policies, one port sits outside both danger zones: Salalah. Oman’s largest container terminal occupies a geographical position that no other facility in the region can replicate.

Located on the Arabian Sea coast, roughly 500 kilometres southwest of the Strait of Hormuz and well north of the Bab el-Mandeb, Salalah falls outside both chokepoint risk zones. It is the only major transshipment hub in the western Indian Ocean that can continue to operate without vessels needing to transit either strait. WTCP data reveals how dramatically Salalah’s fortunes have already shifted once before under similar conditions.

When Houthi attacks disrupted Red Sea shipping in late 2023, Salalah’s Liner Shipping Connectivity Index collapsed from 229 to 133 — a 42 per cent decline in a single quarter — as carriers rerouted services away from the region entirely. But the port’s recovery has been equally striking. By the fourth quarter of 2025, Salalah’s LSCI had rebuilt to 237, a 78 per cent rebound from the trough, suggesting that carriers have already begun repositioning the port as a strategic node outside the chokepoint corridor.

That recovery was accompanied by a surge in throughput. After falling from 4.5 million TEU in 2022 to 3.2 million TEU in 2024, Salalah’s volumes rebounded to 4.3 million TEU in 2025 — a 34.4 per cent year-on-year increase that ranks among the sharpest recoveries of any major transshipment hub globally. The World Bank’s Container Port Performance Index already rates Salalah fifth in the world, with a score of 1.78, reflecting operational efficiency that few competitors can match.

The financial pressure on shipping through the Gulf is immense. Freight rates on Gulf-linked routes have already surged, and the withdrawal of war-risk insurance coverage means that vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz face premiums that render many voyages commercially unviable. Roughly 20 million TEU of annual container capacity passes through the Strait of Hormuz under normal conditions.

With that access now severed, the question for carriers is not whether to reroute, but where. Xeneta’s chief analyst Peter Sand noted that the chokepoint crisis is forcing carriers to reassess their entire Middle East network architecture. Sand did not name Salalah specifically, but Oman’s geography makes the inference difficult to avoid.

With Jebel Ali — the region’s dominant hub at 15.5 million TEU and an LSCI of 791 — now inaccessible behind the Strait of Hormuz, Salalah becomes the default alternative for any carrier needing transshipment connectivity in the western Indian Ocean. Mundra, India’s largest container port at 8.5 million TEU annually, might appear a candidate for overflow volumes, but the comparison is misleading. Mundra’s capacity serves the Indian subcontinent, not the Middle East.

It lacks the regional feeder networks connecting it to Gulf and Levant markets, operates under different customs regimes, and its hinterland connections are oriented toward domestic Indian consumption rather than regional redistribution. It is a gateway port, not a substitute for Jebel Ali’s hub function. Sohar, Oman’s other major port, is no substitute either.

Handling fewer than 1 million TEU annually — less than a quarter of Salalah’s volumes — Sohar operates as a gateway port serving primarily industrial and breakbulk cargo linked to the Sohar Free Zone, with no mainline east-west liner calls and an LSCI connectivity score of just 195 against Salalah’s 237. For carriers needing transshipment capacity and network connectivity outside the Strait, Salalah remains the only credible option in Oman. The critical unknown is whether Salalah can absorb a meaningful share of the displaced volumes.

At 4.3 million TEU, the port is operating well below its peak, and DP World — which operates the terminal — has previously signalled capacity for expansion. But absorbing even a fraction of Jebel Ali’s 15.5 million TEU would require rapid scaling of berth allocation, equipment deployment, and feeder network coordination that cannot be achieved overnight. Container Management was unable to obtain indicative per-TEU trucking rates for the Oman–UAE overland corridor at the time of publication.

However, the physical infrastructure connecting Salalah to markets in the UAE and wider Gulf exists, and the commercial logic for carriers to consolidate at Salalah while the Strait remains closed appears compelling. What is clear from the data is that Salalah has already demonstrated its ability to recover from chokepoint-driven disruption. The LSCI trajectory — from 229 to 133 and back to 237 — is not merely a statistical curiosity.

It is a real-time indicator of carrier confidence, and it suggests that the shipping industry’s contingency planning for Gulf disruptions increasingly runs through Oman’s Arabian Sea coast.

Image generated by Artificial Intelligence

Souce: Container Management

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