A vital oil tanker carrying approximately 750,000 barrels of Saudi crude oil for Pakistan has successfully crossed the active Houthi naval blockade, shipping data released by analytics platform Kpler has confirmed.
Seven of the eleven vessels that passed through Bab el-Mandeb, on Sunday were oil tankers with three of them entering the Red Sea. The voyage included the Hong Kong-flagged Very Large Crude Carrier (VLCC) New Explorer transporting two million barrels of Saudi and Emirati crude for China, a Russian-linked crude tanker, and a tanker with Saudi crude onboard for Pakistan.
The VLCC New Pearl, another Hong Kong-flagged supertanker loaded with two million barrels of Saudi Arabian crude oil has also passed through the Bab el-Mandeb strait to leave the Red Sea. Bound for Zhoushan port in eastern China, it marks the fourth Chinese supertanker to navigate out of the region since the Houthi forces initiated their naval blockade.
The movements occurred as regional traffic plummeted following coordinated Houthi drone and missile strikes against Saudi Aramco facilities in Jizan and Yanbu.
The precarious geopolitical situation around the Bab el-Mandeb strait continues to escalate, plunging global energy corridors into severe instability. The eleven commodity vessels that managed to transit the vital chokepoint on Sunday marked the lowest daily volume recorded in months as Tehran-aligned fighters attempt to choke off Saudi exports.
The escalating maritime embargo compounds existing supply bottlenecks across the Strait of Hormuz, driving physical crude benchmarks to fresh two-month highs and raising immediate concerns for regional energy importers.
