A Year of Houthi Terrorism.. Lloyd’s List Data Tells the Story of One of the Most Dangerous Years in Shipping

A year after an Iranian-backed rebel group hijacked the car carrier Galaxy Leader and held its crew hostage, there have been more than 300 reported attacks on shipping in the Red Sea.

On November 19, 2023, the Bahamian-flagged car carrier Galaxy Leader was traveling from Türkiye to India when it was hijacked by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels off the coast of Yemen.

Its 22 crew were taken hostage and held captive in Yemen for 365 days after their ordeal began. Security firm Ambrey counted more than 300 attacks on shipping in the Red Sea over the next year, upending the industry and rerouting the vast majority of traffic around the Cape of Good Hope.

However, some shipowners continued to brave the Bab el-Mandeb. Unfortunately, many seafarers paid the price for their employers’ decisions with their lives. While the majority of reported incidents were near misses, some ships were hit. Most notably, the Barbados-flagged vessel True Confidence was hit by three missiles, killing three crew members.

The Belize-flagged Rubimar was hit by two missiles on February 18, before sinking two weeks later. The Liberian-flagged cargo ship Tutor became the second ship to be lost to Houthi missiles when it sank on June 19.

One of the most dramatic incidents came later in the year, when the crude oil tanker Sunion was left burning for weeks after being hit on August 23 and then set alight by Houthi rebels two days later.

The Sunion crude oil cargo was at risk of becoming the worst marine oil spill of the century before it was successfully towed and its cargo unloaded. As the shipping industry tried to understand the attacks and apply a standard to targeting the Houthis (the group has long claimed to be targeting Israeli-owned ships or ships docking at Israeli ports), Lloyd’s List compiled data on the beneficial ownership of the ships that were attacked.

In terms of tonnage, Greek owners were the most targeted individually, followed by Switzerland (largely due to Mediterranean Shipping Co- owned container ships), and Denmark.

There have been repeated reports of a deal between the Houthis, China and Russia since the crisis began. While no Russian ship has yet been hit by Houthi missiles, Chinese cargo has been at the tail end of attacks over the past year.

Every corner of the industry has denounced the violence directed at seafarers, including several times by IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez.

But aside from the most significant part of the Houthi campaign, the threat to seafarers’ lives, many ports paid the price for rerouting ships around the Cape of Good Hope, which happened almost overnight.

Deputy Editor Linton Nightingale explained how Saudi Arabia’s ports at Jeddah and King Abdullah Port have suffered greatly from the rerouting. King Abdullah Port built its position on a hub-and-spoke model, and the evaporation of that link has meant that berthing capacity at King Abdullah Port has fallen by 88% in the first half of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023.

It was a similar story in Jeddah, where berthing capacity fell by 70% in the first six months of 2024.

In the Mediterranean, fortunes were largely divided between East and West. Eastern ports such as Piraeus and Port Said suffered from the virtual closure of the Suez Canal, while their western counterparts such as Valencia and Barcelona benefited from the rerouting of the Cape of Good Hope.

The International Energy Agency estimated that rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope would lengthen the voyage time between Rotterdam and Singapore by 40%, and if all ships lost access to the Suez Canal, ton miles would increase by 10%.

The increased tonne miles mean, of course, that some shippers are profiting from the Red Sea crisis. But longer journey times mean more fuel and more emissions (the International Energy Agency estimates that global oil demand will increase by 330,000 barrels per day in 2024 as a result of the rerouting) at a time when shipping is struggling for every tonne of CO2 it emits.

So what’s next? Several market analysts have made bold predictions based on shipping returning to the Red Sea next year. It’s true that this crisis may end as quickly as it began, and we may see ships using the shortcut again in 2025.

But it is worth remembering that the last time the Suez Canal was closed for an extended period of time, it did not open for eight years.

Source: Lloyd's List, an American website specializing in shipping affairs