A commercial vessel passes through an international shipping lane off Yemen's Hanish Island in the Red Sea. AFP
This marks the eighth Saudi oil tanker targeted since the Houthis declared a maritime blockade on the kingdom on July 22.
The Houthis declared they will escalate attacks in the northern Red Sea because Saudi Arabia is diverting its oil tankers there from the south in response to their blockade.
With Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the Saudi port of Yanbu on the Red Sea became the main exit point for Saudi oil, with the Bab al-Mandeb Strait turning into a crucial transit route for crude.
The narrow waterway connects the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean and, via the Suez Canal, the Mediterranean.
On Tuesday, the chief executive of Saudi Arabia's state oil firm said that attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels had no real effect on the oil giant's production.
Strikes by the group had "no material impact on our capabilities", Aramco president and CEO Amin H. Nasser said during a call with reporters, adding that they included Houthi attacks in July which targeted the company's operations on the Red Sea coast and elsewhere.
Saudi Aramco said its net profit rose 44 per cent in the second quarter year-on-year as the Middle East war pushed oil and gas prices higher.
According to data from maritime tracker Kpler, Saudi seaborne crude exports via the Bab al-Mandeb strait surged eightfold between March and mid-July 2026 compared with the same period in 2025.
It skyrocketed to nearly 100 million barrels for the month of June, compared to 7 million barrels in February.
In April and May, all of Saudi Arabia's seaborne crude exports departed from Yanbu port, according to Kpler data.
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