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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/26/business/saudi-oil-houthis-iran.html
Saudi Arabia Reroutes Oil Exports Yet Again
(New York Times) Lisa Friedman - Saudi Arabia, long the world's largest oil exporter, has spent the last six months improvising how to get its crude to the world. Since the war in Iran effectively eliminated its main transit point in the Persian Gulf - the Strait of Hormuz, Saudi Arabia has been forced to find a new route, shipping oil via the Bab al-Mandab Strait in the southern end of the Red Sea. Recent attacks by Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi militants have forced the kingdom to move oil north in the Red Sea, via ships that unload crude at the Sumed pipeline in Egypt that shuttles it to the Mediterranean Sea, since the Suez Canal cannot accommodate giant tankers. This convoluted route is costlier and takes weeks longer for oil to reach markets in Asia. More than 1.9 million barrels of crude per day, mostly from Saudi Arabia, traveled through the Sumed pipeline in August compared with fewer than 650,000 barrels a day in June, according to Kpler.