Red Sea Shipping Slows After Houthi Attack on Saudi Arabia

Eleven commodity vessels pass through the Bab el-Mandeb strait on Sunday, the lowest level in months

Ship traffic through Bab el-Mandeb fell on Sunday (Jul 26) after Yemeni Houthis attacked Saudi oil installations along the Red Sea coast, while transit through the Strait of Hormuz stayed low over the weekend, shipping data from Kpler showed on Monday.

Red Sea traffic has been disrupted off the coast of Yemen since last week by the Teheran-aligned Houthis, who want to blockade Saudi exports, expanding the US-Iran conflict that has already choked oil supply through the Strait of Hormuz.

The shipping disruption caused prices of physical crude cargoes in the Middle East, Europe and Africa to jump to two-month highs last week.

Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said the group struck sites belonging to Saudi Arabia’s state oil company Aramco in the cities of Jizan and Yanbu on Saturday.

Seven of the vessels that passed through Bab el-Mandeb were oil tankers with three of them entering the Red Sea. Two of them are very large crude carriers (VLCCs) heading to the port of Yanbu to load Saudi crude while the third is a Russian-linked ship, the data showed.

The four vessels that exited the Red Sea on Sunday included the Hong Kong-flagged VLCC New Explorer carrying two million barrels of Saudi and Emirati crude for eastern China’s Ningbo port, a tanker carrying one million barrels of Russian crude for China and a tanker with about 750,000 barrels of Saudi crude onboard for Pakistan, the data showed.