Seven vessels have diverted away from the Bab al-Mandab since the 22 July tanker strikes, according to ship-tracking data1. The strait, the southern passage past Yemen through which Gulf oil reaches the Suez Canal, had absorbed traffic pushed off the Hormuz route as the northern chokepoint tightened.
The diversions turn a single attack into a routing problem for every owner weighing the southern passage. Hormuz weekly transits had already fallen 66% before this; avoiding the Bab al-Mandab as well leaves the long haul around the Cape of Good Hope as the remaining way from the Gulf to Europe, adding roughly ten days and the fuel bill to match. War-risk underwriters, who have held a Hormuz exclusion for weeks, now have a fresh southern-strait case on which to widen it.
