The global energy crisis has been the talk of the town since early March this year and is facing a fresh threat.
Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz has been severely disrupted, and now Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi movement has seized the Red Sea port of Mocha and is pushing further south towards the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, another critical gateway for global oil and trade flows, reported news agency Reuters.
The development raises the risk of a second major disruption to global shipping at a time when oil supplies are already under pressure.
Traffic through Hormuz has fallen to single digits in recent days, compared with around 125 large commercial vessels a day before the Iran war began.
On September 10, just seven vessels were tracked through the strait, according to Reuters. At the same time, the Houthis seized Mocha and advanced towards strategic locations near Bab el-Mandeb.
Oil prices have already reflected those concerns. Brent crude briefly crossed $109 a barrel on Friday after jumping 6% on Thursday, before easing back. It was still heading for a weekly gain of around 10%.
The worry now is simple: if Hormuz remains severely restricted and Bab el-Mandeb also becomes difficult to use, the world’s oil and shipping networks could face a much bigger problem.
Bab el-Mandeb is a narrow waterway between Yemen and the African countries of Djibouti and Eritrea. It connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea.
It is effectively the southern gateway to the Suez Canal.
Ships travelling between Asia, the Middle East and Europe use the route to enter or leave the Red Sea and access the Suez Canal. At its narrowest point, the strait is only around 29 km wide, with the Yemeni island of Perim dividing the passage into two channels.
That makes Bab el-Mandeb one of the world’s important maritime chokepoints, a narrow passage through which large volumes of energy and other goods have to pass.
The threat to Bab el-Mandeb is not entirely new. Houthi attacks on commercial ships have already forced many vessels to avoid the Red Sea, sharply reducing the amount of oil moving through the strait.
According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), 9.3 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum products passed through Bab el-Mandeb in 2023.
That fell to just 4.1 million bpd in 2024 and remained around 4.2 million bpd in the first half of 2025.
In other words, oil flows through Bab el-Mandeb were already more than 50% below their 2023 level after the attacks prompted ships to take alternative routes.
But the oil did not simply vanish from global trade.
Much of the traffic was rerouted around Africa via the Cape of Good Hope, a far longer route.
That shift is visible in the EIA’s data. Oil flows around the Cape of Good Hope rose from 6.2 million bpd in 2023 to 9.3 million bpd in 2024, and stood at 9.1 million bpd in the first half of 2025.
This is the real problem: when Bab el-Mandeb becomes too risky, the world can reroute some oil — but doing so adds distance, time, fuel and shipping costs.
That makes the current Houthi advance more worrying because Hormuz is already severely disrupted. If shipping through Bab el-Mandeb also becomes significantly more difficult, another major energy route would come under pressure at the same time.
Oil tankers do have another option. They can sail around the southern tip of Africa, through the Cape of Good Hope.
But that alternative is far longer and more expensive.
The EIA data shows how shipping patterns have already changed. Oil flows around the Cape of Good Hope rose from 6.2 million barrels per day in 2023 to 9.3 million bpd in 2024, and remained at 9.1 million bpd in the first half of 2025.
So the lesson from the previous Bab el-Mandeb disruption is not that the world’s oil suddenly disappears.
It is that the journey becomes longer and more expensive.
Ships travelling around Africa burn more fuel and spend more time at sea. That raises freight and insurance costs and reduces the effective availability of vessels because each ship takes longer to complete a journey.
The EIA warns that disruption at major energy chokepoints can cause supply delays and higher shipping costs, which can eventually push up global energy prices.
This is what makes the current situation particularly worrying. The Strait of Hormuz is a much larger energy chokepoint than Bab el-Mandeb.
In the first half of 2025, around 20.9 million barrels per day of crude oil and petroleum liquids passed through Hormuz, compared with 4.2 million bpd through Bab el-Mandeb.
But Hormuz is already under severe pressure.
Before the Iran war, around 125 large commercial vessels typically passed through the strait each day. On September 10, only seven were tracked, according to Reuters. The US blockade of Iran-related shipping has also halted Iranian crude exports.
That means the world is already dealing with a major disruption at its most important oil chokepoint.
Now another one is coming under threat.
The Houthis already control Hodeidah, a major port on Yemen’s Red Sea coast.
This week, they seized Mocha and have been pushing further south. Reuters reported that Dhubab, which sits directly along the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, and Perim Island, which divides the waterway, are strategically important for gaining control over the passage.
The significance goes beyond geography.
Even without completely stopping ships, the Houthis could make the route sufficiently risky to force shipping companies to stay away.
That has happened before.
Following Houthi attacks from late 2023, major shipping companies including Maersk, MSC and Hapag-Lloyd, as well as oil companies such as BP, rerouted vessels around Africa. Freight costs increased and journeys became significantly longer.
The current advance therefore raises the possibility of a renewed and potentially deeper disruption.
Bab el-Mandeb is also important for India because it is part of the maritime route connecting oil-producing regions and Asian buyers.
The EIA says that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, much of Russia’s oil exports from western Russia shifted away from Europe towards Asia, mainly India.
Russian crude and condensate flows through the Suez Canal and Bab el-Mandeb in 2024 and the first half of 2025 remained relatively stable from 2023, partly because Russian ships were rarely targeted by Houthi attacks.
A more serious disruption to the route could therefore have implications for the movement of Russian oil towards Asian markets.
There is another energy concern: LNG.
The EIA says LNG flows through Bab el-Mandeb were near zero in 2024 and the first half of 2025, as ships avoided the route because of security risks and high insurance costs.
So the problem isn’t limited to crude oil. It extends to gas, shipping capacity and the cost of moving energy around the world.
This is why the developments around Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb matter beyond the Middle East.
The world’s energy system can technically reroute some cargoes. The EIA points out that most major chokepoints can be circumvented, although alternative routes can add significantly to transit time and cost.
But when one route is already severely disrupted and another is under threat, the number of practical and economical alternatives shrinks.
That can create a chain reaction:
Chokepoint disruption ships reroute journeys become longer freight and insurance costs rise effective shipping capacity falls energy costs face upward pressure.
And that pressure can eventually spread beyond oil markets to transport, manufacturing and consumer prices.
For now, Bab el-Mandeb itself has not stopped functioning. Reuters ship-tracking data showed 26 commodity vessels passing through the strait on September 10, broadly in line with the recent average.
But that is precisely why the Houthi advance matters. The risk is no longer simply that one shipping route is disrupted.
It is that Hormuz is already badly constrained while another critical route is moving closer to the centre of the conflict.
And if both remain under pressure, the world may be able to keep its oil moving — but at a much higher cost.
That means the fuel crisis may be far from over.