France is working on a new UN Security Council resolution to unblock the Strait of Hormuz. The country intends to work with the Americans and its partners on a resolution that guarantees freedom of navigation. French President Macron had a meeting with Trump on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly and said he had discussed the situation in the Red Sea and Ukraine with the tycoon. For the French leader, the meeting was "very constructive". The two discussed how to "ensure greater security" for oil transport routes and the "need to help our Ukrainian friends even faster and with greater force in terms of interceptors".
G7 foreign ministers condemned the "unacceptable continuation of attacks" launched by Yemen against Saudi Arabia and urged the Iran-backed group to immediately cease fire. The Al-Masirah network, a Yemeni television channel owned by the Houthi movement, reported that the Saudi air force bombed the city of Al-Makhā, a port city located on the Red Sea coast, at least three times, causing injuries to 14 civilians, including women and children. British Prime Minister Andy Burnham has confirmed that the UK will provide defensive military support to Saudi Arabia against the Houthis. The UK will provide air-to-air refueling support exclusively for Saudi aircraft engaged in defensive missions.
Saudi Arabia spent months trying to bypass the Strait of Hormuz but the alternative route through the Red Sea was cut off by Houthi attacks. Now the world's top oil producer finds itself forced back on the path it initially sought to avoid. This is what the 'Wall Street Journal' writes, taking stock of the delicate situation in Saudi Arabia after the Houthi attacks. "For months - writes the US economic daily - Saudi Arabia has diverted oil through the desert" with the East-West pipeline "to avoid the Strait of Hormuz" but "now the alternative route on the Red Sea is blocked by attacks" by the Houthis. Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia's state oil giant, has returned to loading oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, taking the risk of passing them through the Strait of Hormuz.
“The company has asked some of its Asian customers – its most important oil market – to pick up their shipments just outside the strait, off the coast of Oman,” according to sources. The risky attempts to cross the Strait of Hormuz, underlines the 'Wall Street Journal', "show how much the United States and its Gulf allies are struggling to keep key oil routes open, while Iran and its allies are able to interrupt them with missiles and drones". The stakes for the global economy and for the Trump administration, also in view of the mid-term elections, "are high": "Interruptions in oil supplies have increased the cost of petrol and diesel, fueling fears of inflation and voter anger".
The US military, the newspaper notes, "has managed to contain Iranian attacks enough to allow millions of barrels of oil to pass through Hormuz daily. However, attacks by Iran-backed Houthi militants and those from Iraq are reducing the effectiveness of these advances, blocking other supply routes." Gulf producers from the United Arab Emirates to Iraq are accelerating the construction of alternative routes for their crude oil, driving up transportation costs and, in the case of Saudi Arabia, not sustainably resolving the situation, which has pushed the country's oil production to its lowest levels in several decades.
"The cost of transporting crude oil from the Saudi port of Ras Tanura, in the Persian Gulf, to the Chinese port of Ningbo - writes the 'WSJ' - has gone from around $4.5 million to almost $63 million per trip, according to Michael Haigh, head of raw materials research at the French bank Société Générale. Before the war with Iran, Saudi Arabia sent the majority of its oil exports through the Strait of Hormuz and from there to Asian customers As Iranian attacks on shipping choked traffic through that waterway, the kingdom moved millions of barrels through its East-West pipeline to the Red Sea port of Yanbu in July as Iranian-backed Houthi militants stepped up attacks on Saudi Arabia-linked shipping near Bab el-Mandeb, with some Saudi shipments rerouted north through Egypt. Suez and the Sumed pipeline system".
Without the pipeline, Saudi Arabia "is increasingly resorting to an elaborate system of loading crude oil at the Saudi terminal at Ras Tanura in the Persian Gulf, transporting it through Hormuz and then transferring it to ships off the coast of Oman for distribution to customers in global markets, and then returning to Ras Tanura for a new load." In the last two weeks, the 'Wall Street Journal' notes, "about 2.4 million barrels per day of Saudi crude oil and condensates have once again passed through the Strait of Hormuz, according to Kpler. It is a level not seen since the beginning of July, before Houthi militants announced a maritime blockade of Saudi Arabia and began attacking Saudi ships in the Red Sea. The daily average in the last 4 weeks of shipments of Saudi crude oil carried inland of the Persian Gulf rose to more than 2 million barrels a day last week, compared with virtually zero levels for much of June and less than 1 million barrels a day in July, according to data firm Vortexa."
Meanwhile, cargoes from Red Sea terminals "dropped to zero following attacks on the East-West pipeline in early September. Saudi Arabia had already reduced cargoes from Yanbu port in August after Houthi militants declared a blockade of Saudi ports and shipping in late July. "We are certainly seeing Saudi Arabia loading more crude from Ras Tanura and transporting it through the strait," commented Richard Matthews, director of the broker's consultancy and research division. naval officer E.A. Gibson didn't do it before because it had alternatives, he explained, "but now these alternatives no longer exist".
Attacks against the alternative route across the Red Sea are complicating hopes that Gulf states can simply build new infrastructure to free themselves from dependence on Hormuz. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent explained in September that, within two years, new pipelines would make the strait a "worthless body of water" as the oil would be transported overland. On Sunday, however, Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi, energy minister of Qatar — which before the war exported its vast quantities of liquefied natural gas through Hormuz — rejected this idea. “It's completely wrong,” he noted at the Qatar Economic Forum in New York. "This waterway transports goods of all kinds, not just oil and gas, to and from all the countries bordering it".
