LONDON : Saudi crude oil exports from the Red Sea are increasingly vanishing from view as tankers switch off tracking signals to avoid attacks by Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis, with analysts saying all recent Yanbu loadings have been conducted “dark”.
The Houthis declared a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia on July 20, opening a new front against the United States and its allies in the Iran war. Since then, they have claimed attacks on Saudi-linked tankers, Yanbu oil facilities and, most recently, the Jazan refinery on the Red Sea coast, prompting more vessels to operate without publicly visible tracking data.
The growing use of so-called dark voyages is clouding visibility into Saudi oil exports, making it harder to assess the degree to which the Houthi threats may be disrupting crude flows. Ship-tracking firms have produced widely differing export estimates – data which is used by the International Energy Agency, OPEC and traders to assess global oil supply and forecast market trends.
In the week beginning August 3, data analytics firm Vortexa estimated Yanbu loadings fell to 2.38 million barrels per day from 2.71 million the previous week, while Kpler estimated a sharper drop to 1.78 million bpd from 4.04 million, and AXSMarine calculated a rise to 850,000 bpd from about 420,000 bpd.
