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Countries like Japan, the Philippines, Thailand and South Korea – which rely on Middle East oil for up to 90% of their imports – are working to secure supplies after Yemen’s Houthis launched a blockade of Saudi Arabian shipping passing through the Bab al-Mandab strait, which forms the southern entrance to the Red Sea.
Many countries in Asia are still reeling from Iran’s effective closure of the strait of Hormuz in March, which forced governments across the region to compete for increasingly dwindling supplies of Middle Eastern crude oil.
“They’re scraping at the bottom of the barrel in terms of global reserve capacity … there’s very little inventory now,” says Ahmed Helal, from the Asia Group thinktank.
Japan – along with neighbouring countries – is already spending billions on fuel subsidies to keep the cost of petroleum down, hitting government budgets hard. After the announcement from the Houthis, some like South Korea were quick to extend those fuel tax cuts.
Meanwhile, the spike in the cost of imports has led to a rise in inflation, piling pressure on the governments of regional giants such as Japan and Indonesia.
Now, the threat to Red Sea shipping is set to increase the pressure. In March, Saudi Arabia responded to the closure of the strait of Hormuz by rerouting oil exports from the gulf on the country’s east coast, to the west coast port of Yanbu in the Red Sea which now handles more than 70% of Riyadh’s crude oil exports.
That proved to be a lifeline for many Asian nations, like China – which is the largest buyer of Saudi oil – and India, Japan and South Korea, which follow close behind.
Some Japanese and South Korean refiners are reportedly seeking to circumvent the Houthi threat by rerouting cargos north through the Suez canal, to the Mediterranean and around Africa. But this lengthy detour comes with huge costs.
A VLCC, the largest size of oil tanker, is too big to pass through the Suez canal fully loaded, meaning cargos would need to unload up to half of their oil in the Red Sea, have it transported through Egypt’s Sumed pipeline to the Mediterranean coast, where they would then pick it up after transiting through the canal, adding costs and logistical complications to the journey.
Rerouting the oil via the Mediterranean and around the Cape of Good Hope would also more than double the voyage time for most Asian importers, further adding to freight and fuel costs.
For now, it’s a cost many may be willing to incur. The Houthis targeted at least two Saudi oil tankers exiting the Red Sea last week and launched attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure this week. The number of vessels transiting through Bab al-Mandab has fallen to the lowest level in months, with international shipping apparently paralysed by the Houthi threat.
“Changing behaviour by tankers tells us that they are taking the threats seriously,” says Matt Smith, a commodity research director at Kpler, a market tracker.
Insurers have responded in kind, with war risk premiums paid by tankers reportedly doubling in the last week, potentially adding hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of a voyage.
Those costs will inevitably be passed on to consumers in Asia, who are already reeling from the energy shock imposed by the US-Iran war.
“Businesses are going to have to close. You might have attempts to reduce consumption at peak hours. And you might have, in some extreme cases, higher risk of default,” says Helal.
A vulnerability exposed
After transits through the strait of Hormuz slowed to a halt in March, many countries in Asia rushed to mitigate the effects of the disruption. Coal-fired power plants blazed back into use, a four-day working week was imposed in Sri Lanka, while staff in Vietnam were urged to work from home. But now, resources and patience are running low.
The Houthi threat has inspired the Philippines, India and South Korea to all bolster their strategic reserves of oil and gas. Meanwhile across the region, the crisis has added a renewed urgency to the renewables transition.
But with no short-term solutions, Asian importers are reportedly looking farther afield for supplies, with Russia once again likely to benefit from chaos in the Middle East.
Earlier this year Japan and South Korea reportedly bought Russian oil for the first time since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. In the past week, Reuters reported that Chinese refiner ramped up purchases of sanctioned Russian crude oil to counter the latest disruptions.
The disruption and chaos points to a truth that experts say governments in Asia have ignored for too long: their energy systems remain far too vulnerable.
Helal predicts this crisis will force many governments to reckon with their supply chains and their capacity to store strategic reserves.
But for now, they simply have to secure supplies, he says, because “there’s very little in the tank for them to draw on.” %!s(
