Middle Eastern Conflict Further Escalates With Fuel-Tanker Attack

Yemen’s Houthi rebels launched a missile attack on Friday that sparked a fire on a fuel tanker operated by Trafigura, carrying Russian naphtha, raising concerns that attacks on Red Sea shipping are expanding and not just confined to US, UK or Israeli linked ships.

• The missile struck the fuel tanker Marlin Luanda as it transited the Red Sea. By Saturday morning, the fire had been fully extinguished and the crew was safe, a Trafigura spokesperson said.
• UKMTO received a report of an incident approximately 60 nautical miles southeast of Aden where "a vessel has been struck by a missile and remains on fire." Crew members were reportedly safe.
• On Sunday US officials said a drone attack by Iran-backed militants on US troops in northeastern Jordan killed three US service members and wounded at least 34 people.
• The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella organization of hardline Iran-backed militant groups, claimed attacks on three bases, including one on the Jordan-Syria border.
• Iran's mission to the United Nations said in a statement on Monday that Tehran was not involved in the attack. "Iran had no connection and had nothing to do with the attack on the U.S. base," the mission said in a statement published by the state news agency IRNA.
• Sell-side analysts are seeing the latest escalation in the Middle Eastern conflict increasingly bullish for the crude oil market.
• The oil market “has been exposed to a buffet of supply-side risks. It does appear that even with any softening we’re seeing to demand, geopolitics is shaping up so that oil prices could have more upside risk in them,” Vishnu Varathan, chief economics Asia at Mizuho Bank said.
• Rapidan Energy Group said the attack are significantly escalating and “that should cause the oil market to build in another couple of dollars per barrel of Iran contagion risk,” said Bob McNally, founder of the firm said.
• Weekly shipping transits through the Suez Canal dropped by 42% in the last two months amid increasing Houthi rebel attacks on vessels, a Unctad study showed, cited by the national news.