The Houthis have again attacked a tanker carrying Russian oil in the Red Sea.
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According to Bloomberg, we are talking about the Marlin Luanda vessel of the trading giant Trafigura Group. A company spokesman said a fire broke out after the defeat and warships were dispatched to assist.
The Marlin Luanda tanker was transporting Russian oil products for the production of gasoline and plastics.
The raw materials were loaded onto a ship in Greece, which indicates that the carrier violated EU and US sanctions on the export of petroleum products from Russia. This cargo was purchased at a price below the ceiling set by Western countries almost a year ago, a representative of the operator noted.
The Houthis hit the ship with a ballistic missile, US military sources say, and a fire broke out on board.
US Central Command later said it struck a Houthi anti-ship missile aimed at the Red Sea and preparing to launch. The US military discovered the missile in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen and destroyed it in self-defense.
Since the fall of 2023, Yemen’s Houthis have regularly attacked ships in the Red Sea. On November 14, the group announced that it would attack all ships associated with Israel, calling its actions a response to “American-Israeli aggression in the Gaza Strip,” but not only military, but also commercial ships from different countries were attacked.
On January 10, the British Ministry of Defense reported that destroyers of the British fleet, together with American ships, repelled the largest Houthi attack in the Red Sea in recent times. The next day, the US and UK launched large-scale strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen. Biden called the strikes “defensive actions.”
On January 17, the United States re-listed Yemen’s Houthi movement as a terrorist group due to attacks on ships in the Red Sea. The Houthis were first listed as a terrorist organization by the Donald Trump administration shortly before he left office, but under Joe Biden the Houthis were removed from the list so as not to worsen the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.
Oil problems of the Russian Federation
Meanwhile, 10 million barrels of Russian Sokol oil on 14 tankers are stuck at sea.
They have been stranded off the coast of South Korea for weeks because they cannot be sold due to US sanctions and payment problems.
These volumes are equal to 1.3 million metric tons, which corresponds to 45 days of production from the Sakhalin-1 project, which was an important project of Exxon Mobil, which withdrew from Russia after Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. After the American company left, production fell to almost zero and has not fully recovered since then.
The difficulty in selling Sokol crude is one of the biggest problems Moscow has faced since Western sanctions were imposed and one of the worst disruptions to Russian oil exports in the past two years.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.