The highest worker activity since the maritime blockade threats by the Houthi group has been recorded at the port of Yanbu, located on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia. Five Very Large Crude Carriers (VLCCs) were positioned simultaneously at the port’s loading terminals.
Sea-news.az reports that satellite imagery shows five supertankers anchored at Yanbu’s crude oil loading facilities. This indicator represents the most active maritime day observed in the Yanbu waters since the Houthis’ threats and blockade statements issued against Saudi ports two weeks ago.
Amid tensions with Iran, the increasing risks of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz have sharply raised the strategic importance of the Yanbu maritime terminal in Saudi Arabia’s crude oil exports. Saudi Arabia transports a large portion of its oil via internal pipelines to the Red Sea coast and sends it to international markets by sea. It should be noted that a “Very Large Crude Carrier” (VLCC) type supertanker has a carrying capacity of approximately 2 million barrels of oil.
According to data from vessel-tracking analytics companies Vortexa and Kpler, the Greek-owned “Lesvos” and the Indian-flagged “Desh Vaibhav” tankers loaded Saudi oil at the port of Yanbu and transported it through the Bab el-Mandeb strait by turning off their automatic identification systems (AIS transponders) for security purposes. After the ships stopped transmitting coordinates near Yanbu, they began appearing on radars again off the coast of Oman.
While ships carrying Russian crude oil and some other maritime vehicles continue to pass through Bab el-Mandeb with their transponders open, the risk of Houthi attacks forces many Saudi ships to divert to a longer and more costly route circumventing the African continent (the Cape of Good Hope).
At the same time, Saudi Arabia has directed a portion of its crude oil flow destined for Asian markets from the Red Sea to the Sidi Kerir location, which is the terminal of the SUMED pipeline network on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.
According to Kpler maritime statistics, between Friday and Sunday, 34 commodity ships transited in both directions through the Strait of Hormuz, and 75 tankers transited through the Bab el-Mandeb marine passage. On Friday, more than 8.4 million barrels of crude oil were dispatched by sea from the Persian Gulf, representing one of the highest daily maritime transport figures recorded since the February tensions in the region. The majority of the cargoes were transported by ships with their AIS systems turned off.
