Houthis announce naval blockade in the Red Sea – key oil route under pressure

Alternative route via Yanbu under pressure

Saudi Arabia has meanwhile redirected more than 70 percent of its normal daily crude oil exports to the port of Yanbu on the Red Sea. Shipments from Yanbu over the past weeks averaged four million barrels per day, according to data providers Kpler and Signal Ocean, compared to around 973,000 barrels per day the year before. This puts current export volumes via Yanbu at four times the pre-war level. Roughly four million barrels of oil (each 159 liters) leave the port daily.

Ships from Yanbu bound for Europe sail north through the Suez Canal. Ships bound for Asia, however, sail south through Bab al-Mandab. This means the new blockade hits mainly Asian customers. From Yanbu, oil reaches Europe either by tanker through the Suez Canal or via the SUMED pipeline through Egypt to the Mediterranean. According to a Reuters report from last week, Saudi Arabia is considering expanding its crude oil pipeline on the Red Sea coast.

The Houthi militia emerged in the 1990s in northern Yemen as a military, political, and religious movement. In 2014, it overthrew the internationally recognized, Saudi-backed President Abed Rabbo Mansur Hadi. For more than a decade, it has been engaged in a civil war against the internationally recognized, Saudi-backed government. In 2015, Saudi Arabia led a Sunni alliance into war against the Shiite Houthis and imposed an air, sea, and land blockade against Iran's allies.

A ceasefire between the warring parties from 2022, however, largely held until last week, when Yemen's internationally recognized government said it had struck Sanaa airport to prevent the landing of an Iranian plane. The Houthis blamed Saudi Arabia and subsequently fired rockets at Abha airport in the mountainous southwest of the kingdom. A separate ceasefire between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia has been in place since 2022.

Suspected Iranian orchestration

Iran supports the Houthis as part of its regional "axis of resistance," which also includes the Lebanese Hezbollah and Iraqi Shiite militias as well as the radical-Islamic Palestinian organization Hamas. There is suspicion that Iran ordered the blockade of Bab al-Mandab to pressure US President Donald Trump to end what Iran calls "US aggression in the region."

The blockade comes at a particularly inopportune time: the Red Sea has become an important alternative route for exporting oil and other products from the Gulf states after Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Iran's effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has already removed four million barrels of oil per day from the international market. According to experts, global oil inventories are approaching their minimum level.

Following Hamas's attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and the subsequent Israeli military campaign in the Gaza Strip, the Houthis began, according to their own statements, firing rockets and drones at Israel and ships in the Red Sea in support of the Palestinians. During the Gaza war, the Houthis demonstrated a rocket range of 1,600 kilometers. Last month, however, the Houthis announced they would prevent ships with ties to Israel from passing through the Red Sea, after Israel resumed its airstrikes on Iran. Houthi attacks only ceased entirely with the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip in October.

Consequences for global shipping

The consequences for shipping are already being felt: major carriers such as Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd had rerouted their ships around the southern tip of Africa, but recently resumed some Red Sea routes that they had abandoned during the Houthi attacks last year. A US-led operation to restore freedom of navigation in the Red Sea included repeated strikes on the Houthis as well as the protection of ships, during which hundreds of drones and rockets were intercepted.

The Suez Canal is also seeing massive declines: according to data from the Suez Canal Authority, traffic through the canal in 2025 fell by 52 percent compared to 2023 and is at its lowest level in at least 50 years. The facilities at Yanbu lie 1,300 kilometers from Houthi positions and are thus within the militia's range.