Two tankers carrying Saudi crude to Asia reversed course in the Red Sea after Houthis announced a blockade of Saudi ports, the clearest sign yet of Red Sea tanker shipping threats reaching oil flows that had been moving east. Rodos and Xin Long Yang were carrying a combined 2.8 million barrels from Yanbu when they turned north after initially sailing toward Bab al-Mandeb.
Kpler said the turnbacks were the first visible sign that the Houthis threat is beginning to affect Saudi oil exports. For Asian refiners, the immediate issue is not rhetoric but routing: cargoes that had been headed through the Red Sea may now face a much longer path if shipowners avoid the threatened waters.
Yanbu and Bab al-Mandeb
The two tankers had loaded at Saudi Arabia’s western port of Yanbu, which Saudi Arabia used to redirect growing volumes of crude during the Strait of Hormuz’s essential closure for most of the past five months. In June, Yanbu exported about 4.1 million barrels per day and rerouted roughly 64 percent of the Saudi oil that would otherwise have left through Hormuz.
That workaround is now under pressure. Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea route had been the backstop when Hormuz was constrained, but the reversal of Rodos and Xin Long Yang shows the threat can reach the alternative route too. Before the war, about one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas supplies passed through the Strait of Hormuz, so any loss of flexibility there ripples far beyond one port call.
Asia’s route options
Asian refiners are considering a northwest route from Yanbu through Suez Canal and into the Mediterranean before sailing around Africa and the Cape of Good Hope and on to Asia. That detour would add weeks to delivery times and substantially increase freight and fuel costs, which is why a blockade threat can change trading behavior even before any physical interruption is recorded.
The scale of the traffic at risk is large. The route carries about 6 million barrels of crude per day to Asia, and Saudi Arabia’s export strategy has depended on keeping multiple paths open when one chokepoint tightens.
Strait of Hormuz pressure
On Tuesday, only three commodity vessels were recorded sailing through the Strait of Hormuz, down from four a day earlier, and no very large crude carriers or liquefied natural gas tankers were sighted there. Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain depend almost entirely on Hormuz to export their oil or liquefied natural gas, while Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are also heavily reliant on Hormuz but have pipelines connecting production centres to alternative terminals on the Red Sea and the Gulf of Oman.
The immediate question for shippers is whether Yanbu remains usable as a pressure valve if the Houthis keep the blockade threat in place. The next move belongs to cargo owners and route planners: either accept the longer passage through Suez Canal, the Mediterranean, Africa and the Cape of Good Hope, or keep waiting for a lane that is already changing under them.
