Yemen’s Houthis late on Tuesday claimed an attack on a Saudi oil tanker in the Red Sea, saying that the vessel had violated the blockade the Iran-aligned group announced last week on Saudi shipments in the Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
“The Yemeni armed forces carried out a military operation targeting the Saudi oil tanker (NCC GHAZAL) for violating the maritime navigation ban imposed on the Saudi enemy and for refusing warning calls, using a number of ballistic missiles,” Yahya Saree, the Houthi military spokesman, said in a post on X.
The tanker was forced to retreat and return, the spokesman added.
In the weeks before the strike, the Saudi-flagged GHAZAL “showed high-risk Red Sea behavior, including a 7-day AIS blackout off the Yemen coast, multiple ship-to-ship transfers, and repeated destination changes,” maritime intelligence firm Windward said.
The tanker went dark again on July 23 and hasn’t transmitted its positioning since then, Windward analysts added.
The Houthi attack adds to fresh strikes in the region, with the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) reporting late on Tuesday that Iranian forces launched multiple ballistic missiles at U.S. bases across the Middle East in what it described as a surprise attack.
CENTCOM then reported that the U.S. and Saudi forces carried out “precision strikes” against “multiple terrorist logistics and weapons sites across eastern Iraq.”
The latest report of a Houthi attack on a Saudi tanker is raising even more concerns about the tanker traffic in the Red Sea, even as the U.S.-Iran hostilities have somewhat abated in recent days.
In a sign of Saudi Arabia attempting to re-route its crude oil exports, again, more than half a dozen empty supertankers are currently en route to Egypt’s Sidi Kerir port to pick up Saudi crude to avoid the new threat to the Middle East’s chokepoints, the Bab el-Mandeb in the Red Sea.
Since the Houthis announced last week a blockade on Saudi shipments in the southern Red Sea and Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Saudi Arabia has been shuttling more crude from Yanbu to the Egyptian port of Ain Sukhna on the Red Sea, and then on the SUMED onshore pipeline to Sidi Kerir.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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