Saudi crude flows to Europe drop as Bab el-Mandeb stays shut
Saudi shipments to Europe fell to 350,000 b/d from 415,000 b/d after the strait closed, leaving European buyers competing for a smaller pool of barrels.
Only 11 commodity-carrying tankers transited the Bab el-Mandeb Strait on Sunday (2026-07-26), a multi-month low, as Houthi attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure along the Red Sea coast effectively shut the waterway to most commercial shipping, tanker tracking data showed.4 By Wednesday (2026-07-29), twenty-one commodity vessels crossed in either direction, down from 38 a day earlier, Kpler data showed, with only Russian crude still using the chokepoint.5
The practical result for European buyers has been a meaningful tightening of supply. Saudi crude flows bound for Europe have fallen to roughly 350,000 barrels per day from 415,000 b/d, with Suez-bound cargoes now being redirected to European ports, traders said, meaning the region is absorbing a larger share of a smaller total.3
The closure compounds an already-difficult routing problem for Riyadh. Saudi Arabia had shifted roughly 70-75% of its crude exports through the East-West pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu before the Houthi attacks, Standard Chartered noted, with loadings at Yanbu climbing to approximately 4.5 million barrels per day as the kingdom redirected exports away from the Arabian Gulf.3 Yanbu's capacity is finite, and with Bab el-Mandeb shut, any crude exiting the Red Sea faces a corridor with nowhere obvious to go.
Before the Houthi attacks, roughly 7 million barrels per day transited the Bab el-Mandeb, counting both southbound Saudi crude and northbound flows from the Suez Canal, making it one of the world's most consequential oil chokepoints.3 The current closure does not register yet in ICE Brent front-month prices, which traded at $90.78/bbl as of 2026-08-31.3
That gap between paper and physical is getting difficult to set aside. Positioning data show nine bearish signals and zero bullish weight, a market firmly in glut-narrative mode. But the physical reality is that a key chokepoint is shut, Saudi export routing is constrained, and European refiners are chasing a shrinking pool of Atlantic basin barrels.3
Standard Chartered has flagged that markets must now price two Middle East chokepoints simultaneously, pointing to both the Bab el-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz, where US naval escorts have been shepherding tankers. A US official told Bloomberg Radio that about 6.5 million barrels per day exited the Gulf via Hormuz over the past week.5 The EIA, in its August Short-Term Energy Outlook released on August 11, raised its third-quarter Brent forecast to $85/bbl, citing continued severe constraints on Hormuz transits — a forecast that now sits below where ICE Brent front-month actually trades.7,6
For European refiners, the squeeze is not simply about volume. Urals crude trades at $77.09/bbl as of 2026-08-31, a discount to ICE Brent front-month that makes Russian barrels attractive on price. But the barrels displacing lost Saudi Red Sea supply are not necessarily cheaper once freight costs on rerouted voyages are factored in.3
The UAE offers a partial offset. Abu Dhabi raised crude output to near-record levels above 3.8 million b/d in June after quitting OPEC to escape production caps, two people familiar with production data told Reuters on Monday (2026-07-06), with ADNOC selling crude through tenders at discounted prices.1,2 Those barrels provide relief mainly to Asian buyers and do relatively little to ease the European logistics problem created by the Bab el-Mandeb closure.
Shipping companies Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd have announced plans to resume some sailings through the Suez Canal, which accounts for 10% of global trade, suggesting some rebuilding of commercial confidence in the route.2 For oil tankers specifically, Kpler data indicate few operators are willing to test the waterway. The route remains functionally closed to crude.
ICE Brent for September delivery fell 4.4% to $96.36 per barrel on Friday (2026-07-24) after reports that Pakistan was seeking to broker a return to US-Iran nuclear negotiations, a reminder that geopolitical developments elsewhere can quickly override physical supply signals in the futures market.3
The daily Bab el-Mandeb transit count is now the number worth tracking each morning. If throughput stays near the multi-month lows recorded in late July, the 350,000 b/d figure for Saudi flows into Europe could deteriorate further into the fourth quarter, and the OPEC+ output increase approved in July for an August start will do nothing to remedy a routing problem that production targets cannot fix.4,2