Red Sea shipping slows following Yemen’s blockage on Saudi Arabia
Ship traffic through Bab el-Mandeb fell on Sunday after Yemeni Armed Forces attacked Saudi oil installations along the Red Sea coast in response to Saudi attacks on Yemen, shipping data from Kpler showed on Monday.
Eleven commodity vessels passed through the Bab el-Mandeb strait on Sunday, the lowest level in months, the data showed.
The shipping disruption caused prices of physical crude cargoes in the Middle East, Europe and Africa to jump to two-month highs last week, Reuters reported.
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 2 million barrels of Saudi and Emirati crude for eastern China's Ningbo port, a tanker carrying 1 million barrels of Russian crude for China and a tanker with about 750,000 barrels of Saudi crude onboard for Pakistan, the data showed.
Another Hong Kong-flagged VLCC New Pearl carrying 2 million barrels of Saudi crude is exiting the Red Sea via Bab el-Mandeb strait for eastern China's Zhoushan port, the fourth Chinese supertanker to leave since Yemen declared a naval blockade.
The Yemeni military launched missile and drone strikes on Saudi Arabia's oil facilities and a major airbase on Saturday in retaliation for the latest Saudi military aggression as hostilities between the two neighboring countries resumed after four-year lull.
Saudi fighter jets launched air raids against telecommunications facilities and oil depots in Yemen’s strategic coastal province of Hudaydah on Friday.
The developments followed a missile strike by Yemen against Saudi Arabia after accusing the kingdom of bombing an airport in Yemen on the pretext of breaking the blockade on Yemen by an Iranian plane. Yemen’s Armed Forces on Monday said they were declaring "a maritime embargo against the criminal Saudi enemy, based on the equation of 'an eye for an eye', effective immediately".
Yemen said the blockade was in response to a “continued Saudi siege” on Yemen, and that the country’s Armed Forces were ready to meet any Saudi retaliation with “a total and harsh escalation”.
A full closure of the Bab el-Mandeb strait, the southern gateway to the Red Sea, would halt Saudi oil exports to Asia and could reduce global oil supply by 7%.
Saudi Arabia has diverted 70 percent of its energy exports through the Red Sea. A disruption of the path of transit could become a larger issue for the global energy crisis sparked by the US-Israeli aggression against Iran.