Saudi tanker reaches India as Red Sea attacks disrupt global oil shipping

Two Saudi oil tankers slipped through one of the world's most contested waterways over the weekend, their journeys a small but telling measure of how the region's escalating tensions are reshaping global energy flows. The Desh Vaibhav, a massive crude carrier holding 2 million barrels, crossed the Bab el-Mandeb Strait with its tracking system disabled and is now headed to Sikka port on India's west coast, where Reliance Industries regularly takes delivery of Saudi crude. Alongside it came the Lesvos, a smaller tanker carrying roughly 1 million barrels, also with its transponder switched off as it exited the Red Sea. Both vessels made the crossing as shipping traffic through the region has begun to contract sharply, a visible sign that the threat of attack is reshaping how the world moves oil.

The numbers tell the story plainly. On Friday, 28 commodity vessels passed through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait. By Saturday that had fallen to 27. On Sunday it dropped to 18. The decline mirrors what is happening at the Strait of Hormuz, where passage fell from 19 vessels on Friday to just 10 on Saturday. These are not abstract figures. The Strait of Hormuz alone handles roughly a fifth of the world's crude oil and liquefied natural gas. When traffic slows there, the ripples move through global energy markets within days.

The disruption stems from a deliberate campaign. On July 20, the Iran-aligned Houthis declared a maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia, announcing they would target shipping in waters far beyond their traditional operating area in the Gulf. Since then, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency has logged three additional tanker attacks. Vessels are responding by turning off their automatic identification systems—the transponders that allow shipping companies and authorities to track their location in real time. This creates a secondary problem: some ships are now invisible to the monitoring systems that measure global trade, meaning the actual volume of traffic may be lower than the data suggests.

The tankers that did make the crossing faced genuine risk. The Desh Vaibhav and Lesvos both disabled their tracking systems before entering the Red Sea, a precaution that speaks to the real danger captains now perceive. The Desh Vaibhav's destination—Reliance's Sikka facility—underscores how the disruption reaches directly into India's energy supply chain. Reliance is one of India's largest refiners, and the arrival of this single tanker represents a fraction of what the company typically receives, but it also represents a successful transit through waters that have become genuinely hazardous.

At the Strait of Hormuz, the picture is similarly constrained. On Sunday, only one tanker carrying liquefied petroleum gas loaded in Iran made the crossing. Several very large crude carriers exited the strait on Friday, including the Kiku with 1.4 million barrels of Qatari crude and the Rotterdam Energy carrying 2 million barrels of Das crude. But the overall traffic count—10 vessels on Saturday after 19 on Friday—suggests that shipping companies are either delaying departures, rerouting around Africa at enormous cost and time, or simply holding crude in storage rather than risk the crossing.

The managers and owners of these vessels have largely declined to comment on their routing decisions or the security measures they are taking. Dynacom, which manages the Lesvos, did not respond to inquiries. The Shipping Corporation of India, which operates the Desh Vaibhav, was similarly unavailable. Apex Shipping and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, responsible for other major carriers, also offered no public statement. The silence itself is informative—these are companies accustomed to routine operations, and their unwillingness to discuss what should be routine movements suggests the situation is anything but.

What happens next depends partly on whether the Houthi campaign continues to escalate and partly on how shipping companies adapt. Some vessels are clearly still willing to make the crossing, as the weekend movements show. But the declining traffic numbers suggest that for every tanker that pushes through, others are finding alternative routes or waiting for conditions to shift. The global oil market has absorbed supply disruptions before, but this one is different: it is not a temporary blockade or a single incident, but a sustained campaign that shows no sign of ending. The two tankers that crossed the Bab el-Mandeb over the weekend may represent the new normal—smaller flows, higher risk, and energy supplies moving through contested waters with their lights deliberately turned off.