Saudi Arabia is planning to build a pipeline to Oman, TotalEnergies Chief Executive Patrick Pouyanné told Arabian Gulf Business Insight, in the first public signal that Riyadh is studying an overland crude route to the sultanate's Arabian Sea coast.

The disclosure came from the French major's CEO rather than from Saudi authorities themselves. Neither Saudi Aramco nor the Saudi energy ministry has confirmed the project, and Pouyanné offered no capacity figure, route alignment, cost estimate, or timeline for the proposed line. Until those parameters surface, the scheme sits firmly at the concept stage rather than among sanctioned projects.

A Saudi-to-Oman link would carry crude west-to-east across the Arabian Peninsula toward the Gulf of Oman, where Omani ports such as Duqm and Sohar lie outside the Strait of Hormuz. Any such pipeline would join a short list of bypass options in the region, most prominently the Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline, which moves about 1.5 million bpd from Habshan to Fujairah on the UAE's east coast.

Pouyanné's position gives the remark weight. TotalEnergies holds upstream stakes across the region, including interests in Oman's Block 20, where the 1.5-bcf/d Marsa LNG venture at Duqm is under development alongside the Omani government and Shell's upstream arm. The CEO did not say whether TotalEnergies would have any role in the proposed pipeline.

For Oman, a cross-border crude line would deepen energy integration with its larger neighbour. The two countries already trade natural gas: Oman began importing Saudi fuel in 2023 through a pipeline connecting al-Asha in Saudi Arabia to the sultanate's Saih Rihal facility, with flows initially around 20 MMcf/d.

Analysts will read the plan against Hormuz-risk hedging and Gulf export-diversification strategies, but with no engineering or commercial detail disclosed, market participants can do little more than log the intent.

The watch items: any confirmation from Aramco or Riyadh on capacity and route, the choice of an Omani landfall port, and whether the scheme advances to a front-end engineering study.