Yemen’s Houthi militant group is signaling it wants to squeeze Saudi oil from both ends of the Red Sea. The Iran-aligned rebels on Wednesday said they fired ballistic missiles at a Saudi tanker named Wafa near the northern Red Sea port of Yanbu and vowed to shut “all access routes” for Saudi crude. Riyadh has not confirmed the claimed strike, per the New York Times. The Houthis say they’ve hit eight Saudi-linked ships since announcing a Saudi shipping blockade on July 20, leveraging the territory they hold along the Bab al-Mandab Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea as traffic shifts from the closed Strait of Hormuz. Their latest threat suggests Saudi tankers heading toward the Suez Canal in the northern part of the Red Sea are now in play.
Oil prices ticked up about 1%, to $80 a barrel, on Wednesday, with CFR.org noting as much as 15% of global maritime trade travels through the Red Sea each year.