Following the Houthi in Yemen’s blockade of Saudi Arabian ports on 20 July the group has targeted a number of Saudi tankers as far north as the Red Sea loading port of Yanbu, and also the Gulf of Aden.   Attacks so far have targeted Saudi owned tankers, however, the blockade threat from the Houthi covers vessels that have called in Saudi ports.    With very limited traffic passing through the Strait of Hormuz Saudi has rerouted crude oil exports via the country’s east – west pipeline and VLCC loadings in Yanbu on the Red Sea have reportedly quadrupled as a result since the start of the US – Iran war at the end of February.      Asked about the impact of the Houthi threat in its second quarter earnings call DHT Holdings CEO SveinMoxnesHarjfeld said that previously its VLCCs had done several loadings in Yanbu entering and exiting the Red Sea via the Bab el-Mandeb, however, with the Houthi threat this had become more challenging. “The result of that is that our ships have then typically exited the Red Sea through the Suez Canal and then rerouted, of course, then adding significant transportation distances to the transportation work being conducted.” He added that it was “fair to say most of the VLCC loadings, not just ours, have been directed northwest bound”.      The rerouting of shipments northwards is resulting in trade changes with VLCCs either offloading part of their cargo to move via the 320km pipeline Sumed while the vessel transits the Suez Canal, and the direct loading of shipments in the Med at the port of SidiKerir connected to the Sumed pipeline. “So, we have ships loading at Yanbu, you need to offload about half of the cargo in order for the VLCC to transit the canal, and then you reload on the other end. There are also some ships, not ours or under our sort of commercial control that are shuttling between Yanbu and Ain Sukhna. One of our time charter contracts is involved in that business,” Harjfeld explained. He said that some fixtures, mainly from the Atlantic basin, are seeing tankers load directly in SidiKerir to move cargoes to Europe and the Far East.   “All of this, again, is just creating disruption, reducing the efficiency of the fleet and thereby making the general markets much tighter,” he said.

Analysts Poten estimated recently that shipping Middle East crude from Yanbu to South Korea, for example, via the Mediterranean increases voyage length from 24 days to 54 days.