The Houthis have been disrupting shipping in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen in an attempt to blockade Saudi exports and further escalate the US–Iran conflict.

According to shipping data from Kpler, ship traffic through Bab el-Mandeb fell on Sunday after Yemeni Houthis attacked Saudi oil installations along the Red Sea coast. Meanwhile, transit through the Strait of Hormuz remained low over the weekend. Data showed that only eleven commodity vessels passed through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on Sunday, which is the lowest level in months.

Disrupting shipping in the Red Sea off the coast of Yemen.

Since last week, the Houthis have been disrupting Red Sea traffic off the coast of Yemen, aiming to blockade Saudi exports and further escalate the US-Iran conflict, which has already restricted oil supply through the Strait of Hormuz. The resulting shipping disruption caused the price of physical crude cargoes in the Middle East, Europe and Africa to reach a two-month high last week. A total of seven vessels passed through Bab el-Mandeb, of which seven were oil tankers. Three of these vessels entered the Red Sea. Two of these were Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs), bound for the port of Yanbu to load Saudi crude oil. The third was a Russian-linked ship.

Related: Houthis officially suspend hostilities in the Red Sea

Four vessels left the Red Sea on Sunday.

.On Sunday, four vessels left the Red Sea. These were the Hong Kong-flagged VLCC New Explorer, which was carrying 2 million barrels of Saudi and Emirati crude for Ningbo in eastern China; a tanker carrying 1 million barrels of Russian crude for China; and a tanker with about 750,000 barrels of Saudi crude for Pakistan. This information was based on the data that was available.

The Saudi state oil company Aramco's website was targeted. 

Meanwhile, the New Pearl, a Hong Kong-flagged VLCC carrying two million barrels of Saudi crude, has exited the Red Sea via the Bab al-Mandab Strait en route to Zhoushan port in eastern China. This is the fourth Chinese supertanker to leave since the Houthis declared a naval blockade. On Saturday, Houthi military spokesperson Yahya Saree announced that the group had attacked sites belonging to the Saudi state oil company Aramco in the cities of Jizan and Yanbu.

Only three vessels passed through on Saturday, and they all had their transponders switched off. The data showed that a VLCC was heading to Qatar to load oil, a liquefied petroleum gas tanker was going to the Ruwais port in the United Arab Emirates to load a cargo, and a tanker carrying Qatari naphtha was heading to Japan. On Friday, seven vessels passed through, mostly exiting the Gulf, including two VLCCs carrying crude from Iraq and the UAE and a tanker carrying fuel oil.

Source : Agencies

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