Houthi-claimed oil tanker explosion threatens to pollute the Red Sea

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Parts of the Red Sea face a significant risk of pollution after Yemen’s Houthis blew up a crippled tanker and its cargo of crude oil in the middle of the strategic waterway.

The Iran-backed group posted videos on Friday of its forces deliberately blowing up the Greek-owned Sounion tanker, whose crew were forced to abandon ship after a series of Houthi attacks on Wednesday.

The EU’s Operation Aspides naval force warned on Thursday that the derelict ship and its cargo of 150,000 tonnes of crude oil posed a “danger to navigation and the environment” and urged against any action that would exacerbate the risk.

The exploration of the ship marks a new tactic for the Houthis. Since the group began its campaign against international shipping last November, it has sunk two ships – the Rubymar, attacked in February, and the Tutor, attacked in June. However, he had not previously deliberately blown up an abandoned ship.

Neither Rubymar nor Tutor was carrying a liquid cargo and there were no reports of serious pollution.

Britain’s Office of Commercial Maritime Operations reported before the Houthis posted their video that three fires had been observed on the vessel. This would be consistent with the video posted on a Houthi X account on Friday night. It showed huge explosions tearing through a ship called “Delta Tankers”, the owners of Sounion in Greece. The ship was attacked in the middle of the Red Sea, 77 nautical miles west of the Houthi-controlled port of Hodeidah.

The Houthis’ spokesman posted the footage with words describing it as showing the Yemeni Navy — the name the group gives its own naval forces — burning Sounion. The post said its owners had violated Houthi bans on using ports in “Occupied Palestine,” as they call Israel.

The Houthis presented their campaign as an effort to support Palestinians in Gaza following Israel’s response to Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7. The hundreds of attacks on merchant ships have prompted many international shipping groups to divert ships away from the strategic route through the Red Sea and Suez Canal linking the Middle East and Asia to the Mediterranean and Europe.

There was no immediate assessment from Operation Aspides on the extent of the environmental damage caused by the explosion. However, the ship was 274 meters long and the reported cargo of 150,000 tons would be about the maximum capacity of a ship of this type – about 1 million barrels.

A news agency representing Delta Tankers reiterated the company’s previous insistence that it was trying to save the vessel.

“Delta Tankers is doing everything possible to move the vessel and cargo,” the agency said after the Houthis video was released.

He had previously insisted that Sounion suffered only “minor damage” in a series of missile strikes on Wednesday.

The attack on the Sounion was the Houthis’ first successful attack on a merchant ship since the June 12 attack on the Tutor, which killed one sailor and sank the ship.