Houthi Attacks Halved Red Sea Oil Transit to 3.9M Barrels/Day

Since November 2023, Yemen's Houthi militants have launched over 190 attacks on commercial vessels transiting the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, targeting tankers with anti-ship missiles, drones, and explosive-laden speedboats. Crude oil and petroleum product flows through the Suez Canal dropped from 7.9 million barrels per day in 2023 to 3.9 million barrels per day in 2024 -- a 51% collapse. Tankers rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope add 10-14 days per voyage, burning additional fuel and tying up vessel capacity. This matters because the rerouting doesn't just add shipping costs -- it structurally tightens the global tanker market. With more vessel-days consumed per barrel delivered, effective tanker supply shrinks even as oil demand stays constant. That tightness pushes up freight rates, which get passed through to refiners, then to consumers at the pump. The International Energy Agency estimated that longer voyages absorbed the equivalent of 50 additional VLCCs worth of capacity in 2024 alone. The deeper question is why a single non-state actor can hold 12% of global seaborne oil trade hostage. The Bab al-Mandab strait is only 18 miles wide, and the Houthis demonstrated that cheap asymmetric weapons -- $2,000 drones and $20,000 anti-ship missiles -- can threaten vessels worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Naval coalitions like Operation Prosperity Guardian and EU NAVFOR Aspides have intercepted some projectiles, but they cannot provide escorts for every vessel in a transit zone spanning hundreds of miles. The fundamental asymmetry between the cost of attack and the cost of defense means this chokepoint remains structurally vulnerable to any motivated adversary with basic missile technology. The problem persists because there is no political resolution to the underlying Yemen conflict, no maritime security architecture that can cheaply neutralize swarm-style drone and missile attacks on commercial shipping, and no alternative pipeline infrastructure that can bypass the Red Sea at scale. Egypt's Suez Canal revenues collapsed from $10.2 billion in 2023 to $4 billion in 2024, demonstrating that the economic pain radiates far beyond shipping companies to entire national economies dependent on transit fees.