19AUG

Bab el-Mandeb thins to 7.5 tankers a day

3 min read

18:42UTC

A Windward assessment dated 30 July put Saudi-linked tanker transits through Bab el-Mandeb down 46% after Lloyd's-market war-risk cover for those hulls lapsed on 24 July. Total crossings are down 22% since the blockade declaration.

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Key takeaway

Insurers, not missiles, cut Saudi-linked Bab el-Mandeb tanker transits to about 7.5 a day from 24 July.

A Windward maritime-risk assessment dated 30 July, republished by Hellenic Shipping News, put total Bab el-Mandeb crossings down 22% since the Houthi blockade declaration of 20 July, from about 47.8 a day to 37.2 ¹. Tanker transits fell 39% over the same stretch. Saudi-linked tanker transits fell 46%, thinning to roughly 7.5 a day once Lloyd's-market war-risk cover for those hulls lapsed on 24 July ². Bab el-Mandeb is the strait between Yemen and the Horn of Africa linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, and it carries the short leg from Saudi loading terminals to refineries in Italy, Spain and Greece.

The sequence began with fire and ended with paperwork. The Houthis declared the blockade and struck two tankers on 23 July . Underwriters then pulled cover for Saudi-linked vessels, and the transit count collapsed after that, not before it. Saudi Arabia had already stopped sending crude through the strait and pushed the volume north through Suez instead , so the withdrawal hardens a reroute already under way and stacks on top of the per-voyage Suezmax penalty this desk priced last week .

Cover and premium behave differently, which is why 7.5 transits a day should be read as sticky rather than as a spot low. A war-risk rate can be argued down inside a week once the loss record cools, as it was at the Strait of Hormuz through late June. A withdrawal removes the contract for a defined class of vessel, and reinstating it needs an underwriting committee to accept that class again. Owners will not sail an uninsured hull past a declared blockade, and no premium is on offer to change that.

Windward also logged three Chinese-linked supertankers crossing unmolested on 23 and 24 July, and read that as a carve-out from the blockade ³. No party has stated one. Every number above rests on that single assessment; no insurer, broker or Lloyd's primary source was reached to confirm the withdrawal or its scope.

Deep Analysis

In plain English

Tankers carrying Saudi Arabian oil normally cross a narrow sea passage called Bab el-Mandeb, between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, on their way to refineries in Europe. An armed group called the Houthis, who control part of Yemen, said in July they would attack ships linked to Saudi Arabia, and then struck two tankers. Insurers in London, who provide the war-risk cover ships need before they will sail through a dangerous area, stopped covering Saudi-linked ships from 24 July. Without that cover, owners will not risk sailing the route, so the number of tankers using it dropped by nearly half. Ships are instead taking a longer route around, through the Suez Canal, which costs more and takes longer. The important part to notice: it was not the attacks themselves that emptied the strait. It was insurers deciding, days later, that the risk was no longer one they would price.

Deep Analysis

Root Causes

Marine war-risk cover for a defined class of hull sits with a small number of London and Scandinavian underwriting syndicates rather than being distributed across the market, so a single committee decision to stop quoting Saudi-linked vessels removes insurability for that whole class in one step, faster than owners can assemble alternative cover.

The Houthi blockade declaration supplied the trigger, but the transit collapse tracks the 24 July cover lapse, not the 23 July strikes; the two events sit four days apart in the data because underwriting decisions run on a committee timetable, not a battlefield one.

What could happen next?

Consequence
Owners of Saudi-linked hulls face an open-ended routing cost via Suez until Lloyd's-market underwriters resume quoting cover for the class, a decision no single event can reliably predict.
Short term · Assessed
Risk
A cover lapse that persists past several weeks risks becoming the default routing pattern regardless of whether the Houthi blockade itself eases, since reinstating a withdrawn class needs a fresh underwriting decision rather than a premium adjustment.
Medium term · Reported
Meaning
The transit collapse shows an insurance market decision can ration a chokepoint as effectively as a physical blockade, without a single additional strike.
Immediate · Assessed

Source Landscape

This story draws on neutral-leaning sources

Primary parallel: During the 1980s Tanker War, Lloyd's of London withdrew standard war-risk cover for vessels transiting the northern Gulf, forcing owners onto a separate, costlier facility and cutting transits for weeks at a stretch regardless of how many tankers Iran or Iraq had actually hit that month.

Counter-parallel: War-risk premiums for Strait of Hormuz transits spiked in 2019 after tanker seizures but were priced back down within weeks once insurers judged the loss record had stabilised; a premium hike, unlike an outright withdrawal, leaves the class of vessel insurable throughout.

Reinsuring a Saudi-linked hull now costs whatever a bespoke facility will quote, if one can be found at all, rather than the posted Lloyd's rate; that gap is uninsurable capacity, not an expensive premium, and it prices some owners out of the route entirely regardless of freight economics.

The reroute through Suez absorbs the diverted volume but at the Suezmax substitution cost this desk has already priced at roughly $2 million a voyage , a structural cost floor under the corridor that a war-risk premium reduction elsewhere cannot remove.

Consensus view: Withdrawn Lloyd's-market war-risk cover, not the 23 July strikes themselves , is the mechanism actually rationing Bab el-Mandeb transits: underwriters price a defined vessel class out of the market, and that decision persists independent of whether further attacks occur.

Counter-view: The 46% fall overstates the pain to Saudi export capacity, since Yanbu has carried the bulk of The Kingdom's seaborne crude since the March bypass built out , leaving the strait closure a shipping-cost problem rather than a volume problem.

Key tension: Whether the reroute through Suez is now the durable routing pattern or a temporary detour that reverses the moment cover returns.

Sources:Hellenic Shipping News

Mentions:Windward →Lloyd's of London →Houthis →Bab al-Mandeb →Saudi Arabia →Yemen →Yanbu →Greece →Mediterranean →Iran →Spain →Tanker War →Red Sea →London →Suez Canal →Iraq →Strait of Hormuz →Italy →

First Reported In

Update #21 · Insurers shut Bab el-Mandeb to Saudi hulls

Hellenic Shipping News· 31 Jul 2026

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Causes and effects

Caused by

Houthi blockade cuts Saudi loadings 36%

The 23 July Houthi blockade declaration and tanker strikes triggered the war-risk withdrawal behind the transit collapse Windward quantified on 30 July.

Occurred 23 Jul 2026

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This Event

Bab el-Mandeb thins to 7.5 tankers a day

The route from Saudi Arabia's western terminals to Mediterranean refineries has thinned on an underwriting decision rather than on a strike, and withdrawn cover reverses far more slowly than a premium.

Led to

Saudi Red Sea diesel loadings collapse

The Bab el-Mandeb transit floor this desk logged 30 July strands the same Red Sea cargoes

Occurred 29 Jul 2026

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Different Perspectives

UK Maritime Trade Operations

UKMTO logged six armed men boarding a tanker 136 nautical miles east of Al Mukalla on 20 August and redirecting it toward Somalia. A vessel steered toward the Somali coast reads as an attempted seizure, a distinct hazard from the stand-off strikes the same lane has seen before.

Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf

Iran's Majlis speaker received Iraq's Hormuz carve-out request in Baghdad on 19 August, a request that treats passage as Tehran's to grant. Ghalibaf's authority over that grant sits alongside the Revolutionary Guard's separate transit rules, which have moved independently of Iran's foreign ministry before.

Haibat al-Halbousi

Iraq's parliament speaker asked Iran for special consideration on Iraqi Hormuz oil exports during Ghalibaf's 19 August Baghdad visit. Iraq presses the request from a weak position: Iran's central bank is simultaneously demanding Baghdad release Iranian reserves parked in Iraqi accounts.

Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research

Switzerland's economics ministry updated the Article 21 forms governing lawful Iran money transfers on 19 August, with only the revised forms accepted from 26 August. Bern operates one of the few remaining legal Iran payment channels and has just set a hard cutover on its control point.

Motegi Toshimitsu

Japan's foreign minister said in Muscat on 20 August that Tokyo wants closer coordination with Oman on safe Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb passage. Japan has no naval presence of its own in the strait, so it is routing the ask through the state negotiating with Iran instead.

Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi

Oman's foreign minister joined Japan's in Muscat on 20 August to call for intensified coordination on Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb navigation. Oman also runs the mediation track with Tehran, so the appeal travels through the same channel as the negotiation.