Brent crude surged past $91 a barrel on Tuesday after Yemen’s Houthi movement declared a maritime blockade of the Bab el-Mandeb strait, a chokepoint that Saudi Arabia increasingly relies upon to bypass the largely shuttered Strait of Hormuz. Two Pakistani tankers carrying Saudi crude reversed course rather than transit the waterway, according to ship-tracking data cited by Iranian media. The disruption adds a second front to a crisis that has kept Hormuz effectively blocked since the conflict erupted on 28 February, removing roughly 20 percent of global energy shipments from their normal routes.

The International Energy Agency’s executive director, Fatih Birol, warned that the escalation “increases security of supply concerns and uncertainty over the market outlook,” but stressed that crude markets remain cushioned for now. Gulf producers, led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, continue to push exports through alternative corridors, including the Saudi East-West pipeline that terminates at Red Sea ports—now itself threatened by the Bab el-Mandeb closure. Additional supply from the United States, Brazil, Venezuela and Kazakhstan, combined with a nearly 50 percent drop in Chinese crude imports compared with pre-war levels, has helped absorb the shock. Coordinated releases of strategic stocks by IEA member countries have placed about 290 million barrels on the market since March, with more than one billion barrels still held in government-controlled reserves.

Viewed from Gulf capitals, the response is accelerating long-gestating plans to decouple exports from vulnerable straits. The UAE’s minister of state for foreign trade said a new export route designed to reduce Hormuz dependence to “zero” will be completed before the end of the year, and a third route is under study alongside investments in a Turkey-Basra corridor. In Washington and London, however, attention is turning to the downstream squeeze. Birol noted that refinery activity and fuel production have not recovered in line with crude deliveries, leaving diesel and petrol markets considerably tighter. On the natural gas side, increased LNG exports from the US and Canada have replaced about 70 percent of the Gulf supply lost through Hormuz, but any further delay in resuming Gulf LNG shipments risks leaving European storage critically low ahead of winter.

The impact is falling unevenly across Asia. While China’s demand contraction has provided a buffer for global balances, developing economies such as Pakistan, Bangladesh and India are bearing the brunt. The IEA has flagged health risks as households turn to dung and wood for cooking, unable to afford petroleum-based fuels. Iranian media, reflecting Tehran’s perspective, highlighted the immediate price spike and the Houthi action as a demonstration of leverage over maritime chokepoints. The next factual milestone is the completion of the UAE’s alternative export route before year-end, alongside any military or diplomatic move by Riyadh—which has vowed to take “all necessary measures” to protect its vessels—that could alter the status of the Bab el-Mandeb blockade.