Shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb strait has slowed sharply after Yemen’s Houthis struck Saudi oil facilities along the Red Sea coast, adding fresh strain to one of the world’s most sensitive energy corridors.
Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz also remained subdued over the weekend, according to shipping data from Kpler released on Monday.
Only eleven commodity vessels moved through Bab el-Mandeb yesterday, the data showed, marking the lowest level recorded in months.
Maritime flows in the Red Sea have been unsettled off Yemen since last week, when the Tehran-aligned Houthis moved to blockade Saudi exports, widening the impact of the US-Iran conflict that has already squeezed oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz.
Two of the vessels were very large crude carriers (VLCCs) bound for Yanbu, where they are due to load Saudi crude, while a third was a Russian-linked ship, the data showed.
Four vessels left the Red Sea yesterday, among them the Hong Kong-flagged VLCC New Explorer, which was carrying 2 million barrels of Saudi and Emirati crude to Ningbo in eastern China, a tanker loaded with 1 million barrels of Russian crude for China and another tanker carrying about 750,000 barrels of Saudi crude for Pakistan, according to the data.
The New Explorer is the third Chinese VLCC to depart the Red Sea through the Bab el-Mandeb strait.
Associated Maritime Hong Kong, which manages the New Explorer, did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside office hours.
Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree said the group attacked sites belonging to Saudi state oil company Aramco in Jizan and Yanbu on Saturday.
Hormuz
Daily commodity vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz stayed below 10 ships over the weekend, despite a pause in US and Iranian strikes in the Middle East, Kpler shipping data showed.
Seven vessels transited the waterway yesterday, including three Iranian-linked oil products tankers that left the Strait, the data showed.
On Saturday, just three vessels passed through with their transponders switched off.
They included a VLCC traveling to Qatar to load oil, a liquefied petroleum gas tanker heading to the United Arab Emirates’ Ruwais port to take on cargo and a tanker carrying Qatari naphtha bound for Japan, according to the data.
On Friday, seven vessels crossed the Strait, most of them leaving the Gulf, including two VLCCs carrying crude from Iraq and the UAE and a tanker transporting fuel oil.
