Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Khaled bin Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan on Friday ordered the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company to accelerate construction of a second West-East pipeline to the Gulf of Oman port of Fujairah, a project meant to double ADNOC's ability to ship crude without sending tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. The directive landed hours after President Trump left Beijing with Brent crude climbing 2.4 percent to $108.22 a barrel on the prospect that the 77-day Iran war remains unresolved.

The push reframes the emirate's response to the Hormuz standoff as a long-term infrastructure bet. The existing Habshan-Fujairah line carries up to 1.8 million barrels a day and is ADNOC's only export route avoiding the strait. War-related disruptions have cut UAE output to between 1.8 million and 2.1 million barrels a day, CNBC reported, from just over 3 million before the conflict against a target capacity of 4.9 million.

What the Crown Prince said

ADNOC is "well positioned as a responsible and reliable global energy producer, with the operational flexibility to responsibly increase production to meet market needs when export constraints allow," Sheikh Khaled said at the company's executive committee, according to CNBC. The new line is expected to come online in 2027. Earlier this month, the UAE said it would leave OPEC, which it joined in 1967, before the country itself was founded.

On the Street

U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures for June rose 2.79 percent to $103.39 alongside Brent's move, CNBC reported. The rally tracked Trump's return from a Beijing summit where, a White House official said, he and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed the Strait of Hormuz "must remain open to support the free flow of energy." Xi also opposed any effort to charge tolls for the waterway's use, the official said. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that China would work behind the scenes to help reopen the strait: "It's very much in their interest to get the strait reopened."

The Iran angle

Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Thursday that Xi had ruled out arming Tehran. Xi "said he's not going to give military equipment. That's a big statement. He said that today. That's a big statement. (He) said that strongly," Trump said. Trump added that Xi wanted Hormuz reopened so China could keep buying Iranian crude, which Reuters has estimated at $31 billion to $32 billion a year. Beijing this month ordered Chinese refiners to ignore U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil under a 2021 blocking statute.

At a BRICS gathering in New Delhi the same day, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told members that Tehran would "never bow to any pressure" and pressed them to condemn the U.S.-Israel campaign as a violation of international law, Al Jazeera reported.

Counterpoint

China has not publicly confirmed Trump's account of either the military-equipment pledge or the U.S. oil purchases he said Xi committed to. CNBC said Chinese authorities did not respond to its request for comment. The Fujairah expansion itself does not solve the immediate problem: the new line is not due until 2027, and the existing one is already near its 1.8 million-barrel ceiling.

The next test for crude is whether Bessent's promised Chinese pressure moves Hormuz before Tehran's BRICS lobbying hardens the diplomatic split.