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Oman and Saudi Arabia launched the Secure Green Land Corridor in August 2026, a direct land freight route across the Rub' al Khali or Empty Quarter.
It links Sohar Port on Oman's Gulf of Oman coast with the inland SPARK dry port in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province.
The route was activated through a partnership between Oman's Arkan Logistics and Saudi Arabia's SPARK Logistics, following a bilateral logistics agreement in early August 2026.
It rests on a 564-km Saudi highway built at a cost of SAR 2 billion (about US$533 million), which required moving 150 million cubic metres of sand and opened to traffic in December 2021.
The corridor cuts overland transit by 14 to 18 hours and bypasses both the Strait of Hormuz and UAE transit borders for selected freight.
A dry port is an inland terminal that performs the functions of a seaport — cargo handling, consolidation, storage and, critically, customs clearance — but sits far from any coast. Its purpose is to move congestion and paperwork away from the quayside: containers are railed or trucked inland in bond and cleared at the terminal nearest the customer, so the seaport handles ships rather than trucks. The Saudi end of this corridor is exactly such a facility. SPARK, the King Salman Energy Park in the Eastern Province between Dammam and Al-Ahsa, hosts a dry port and logistics zone able to handle up to 10 million tonnes of cargo a year, operated by SPARK Logistics — a joint venture with Hutchison Ports — and connected to major highways and the planned GCC railway. Pairing a coastal gateway like Sohar with an inland clearance hub is what turns a road into a trade corridor.
Simple Analogy: A seaport is the front door; a dry port is the sorting room down the corridor, where parcels are checked and addressed so the doorway itself never clogs.
The Rub' al Khali, the Empty Quarter, is one of the largest continuous sand deserts in the world and spreads across four countries — Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen. The corridor cuts straight across it. Its eastern end is Sohar Port, on Oman's Gulf of Oman coast north of Muscat; its western end is the SPARK dry port in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province, the region facing the Persian Gulf between Dammam and Al-Ahsa. The Strait of Hormuz, which the route is designed to skirt, is the narrow passage between Iran and Oman's Musandam peninsula joining the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman. Note the geographic irony that makes this project work: Sohar lies outside the Persian Gulf, on the Gulf of Oman side of Hormuz, so cargo landed there has already avoided the strait before the road even begins.
GS Paper 1 > World Geography: Deserts and Important Straits; GS Paper 2 > International Relations: Regional Connectivity
General Awareness > World Geography
General Awareness > Geography and Current Events
The Empty Quarter — one of the world's largest continuous sand deserts, extending across Saudi Arabia, Oman, the UAE and Yemen.
An inland freight terminal that handles cargo operations and customs clearance away from a seaport.
The narrow passage between Iran and Oman connecting the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman; the world's most important oil chokepoint.
King Salman Energy Park, an industrial city in Saudi Arabia's Eastern Province between Dammam and Al-Ahsa, hosting a dry port and logistics zone.
A major Omani port on the Gulf of Oman coast, the maritime end of the corridor.