Saudi oil exports ‘go dark’ amid Houthi threat

Dawn reported that Saudi crude shipments from the Red Sea are becoming harder to track, as tankers turn off their tracking transmissions to dodge Houthi attacks. Analysts said all recent loadings at Yanbu were carried out without active AIS tracking, and ship-tracking firms have published widely differing export estimates. That gap complicates how the International Energy Agency, OPEC and traders judge the market, since they rely on these figures to forecast trends.

Vortexa put Yanbu loadings for the week beginning August 3 at 2.38 million barrels per day, down from 2.71 million, while Kpler reported a far sharper fall to 1.78 million from 4.04 million. AXSMarine, however, calculated a rise to 850,000 barrels per day from roughly 420,000. Houthi strikes have also thinned traffic through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, where vessel counts fell to 32 from 50, pushing more Saudi oil through Suez and Egypt's SUMED pipeline, where Sidi Kerir loadings hit a record 2.17 million barrels per day.

The wider Gulf standoff remains unresolved, with a senior Iranian source saying there has been no progress on restoring the interim agreement with Washington. Trump claimed Washington holds full command of the Strait of Hormuz, while Mohsen Rezaei, an Iranian security official, said the waterway would stay shut unless the US accepted Tehran's conditions for ending the war.