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Does a Bab el-Mandeb tanker attack trigger insurance withdrawal → a ~4 Mbbl/d Saudi export halt → oil above $100?

Notes

Does a Bab el-Mandeb tanker attack trigger insurance withdrawal → a ~4 Mbbl/d Saudi export halt → oil above $100?

The question

anas-alhajji argues the next oil chokepoint is Bab el-Mandeb, not Hormuz, and that the trigger is not a blockade but two tankers hit and European underwriters walking. The chain he lays out:

  1. IRGC-aligned elements influence some Houthi factions → attacks on shipping in Bab el-Mandeb (~6 Mbbl/d transits, mostly Russian and Saudi).
  2. European (mostly UK) insurers cancel war-risk cover — the same mechanism that closed Hormuz without a shot. See war-risk-insurance-as-chokepoint-transmission.
  3. Saudi Arabia loses its east-west pipeline bypass: the crude it re-routed away from Hormuz exits via the Red Sea, so a Bab el-Mandeb insurance event strands >4 Mbbl/d of Saudi crude — the bypass and the chokepoint are the same barrels.
  4. → oil "way above $100"; medium sour (Dubai/Oman) moves far more than Brent/WTI.
  5. → but the disruption is short-lived (a severe Saudi-led coalition response, with US participation) while the insurance premium stays elevated indefinitely — "it will be poisoned forever just like the Hormuz Strait."

The precise question this vault needs answered: is this a tradeable, dated thesis, or a permanent tail that is already in the price?

Why it matters

It is the one scenario Alhajji says would re-ignite crude. His base case is explicitly that the oil trade is over: demand destruction already ran at ~$160 in medium sour, "it already happened and it already passed them," and the market is roughly balanced at $75-85 Brent. He names exactly one thing that changes that: "it's very hard to see this happening again unless we see the Bab El Mandib or any other waterway such as the ones in Asia or in Turkey or others, basically are closed."

So Bab el-Mandeb is the conditional under which refining-bottleneck-to-refiner-crack-capture, hormuz-nitrogen-supply-shock-to-cf-risk-premium, iran-fuel-shock-consumer-bifurcation and helium-cliff-to-hbm-supply-crunch all re-arm simultaneously — they share this single root forcing function, which matters for independent-risk budgeting.

What we currently believe

The transmission mechanism (insurance, not force) is the credible and novel part, and it is the reason the threshold is low: no actor needs the capability to close the strait, only the capability to make it uninsurable. The magnitude (>4 Mbbl/d, >$100) is one expert's estimate with no corroboration.

Alhajji himself rates the probability down: the Saudis are "really good at negotiations", the Houthis do not want a severe coalition response, and "the probability of going back to the agreement is very high." The prior agreement — Saudi economic support for Sana'a in exchange for no attacks — "held very well" until the Abha airport attack broke it.

Evidence we have

All from anas-alhajji in 2026-07-16-podcast-macro-voices-macrovoices-541-dr-anas-alhajji-bab-el-mandeb-the:

  • Volumes: "about 6 million barrels of oil basically passes through Bab el Mandeb, mostly Russian and Saudi oil."
  • The trigger is insurance, not force: "can they close Babel Mandeb? No... But they can cause enough trouble to raise prices oil prices significantly and raise insurance. And the fear is not the Houthis blocking Babel Mandel. The fear is that few guys basically launching an attack on couple of oil tankers. And as a result the insurance companies of Europe, mostly UK will literally cancel the insurance... And if they do that, then Saudi Arabia in particular cannot send its oil through the Hormuz Strait because of lack of insurance."
  • The magnitude: "if the Houthis act or do something for Babin Mandeb, then we will lose more than 4 million barrels a day of Saudi crude as a result. It is the same crude that's been diverted from the Gulf because of Hormuz through the east west pipelines. And losing that basically will force prices way above $100 it seems."
  • What broke the truce: "the attack by the Houthis on the Saudi airport in the city of Abha, which kind of ended the agreement that the Saudis had with the Houthis... those IRGC extremists were able to control either the Houthis or some of the Houthis."
  • Russia is insulated (the asymmetry): "Putin will be a big winner here because he is sending massive amount of oil to India and China and that oil is mostly sent on sanctioned tankers that do not qualify for the western insurance anyway."
  • Short disruption, permanent premium: "the issues with Bab El Mandib will not last long, but it will be poisoned forever just like the Hormuz Strait. And therefore insurance basically will be higher for longer as a result, even if Bab El Mandib is open a few days after those attacks."
  • He de-rates his own scenario: "the Saudis are really good at negotiations and they've proven this. So they might end up bringing the Houthis to the table and ending that Bab El Mandib issue... the probability of going back to the agreement is very high."

Evidence we need

  • Independent corroboration of the insurance mechanism. The EU solvency rule, the 7-day cancellation clause, and the Indian-Ocean coverage extension are the load-bearing facts and are single-sourced to one podcast. A primary regulatory or underwriter source would move this from anecdote to mechanism.
  • Observable war-risk premia for Bab el-Mandeb transits — would turn the falsifier machine-checkable and give a leading indicator instead of a narrative.
  • Confirmation of the >4 Mbbl/d Saudi Red Sea export figure from tanker-tracking or EIA/Kpler data. This is the magnitude the whole thesis turns on and no second source has been checked.
  • Status of the Saudi-Houthi agreement post-Abha — the single highest-value probability input, and it is checkable from news flow.
  • Whether a listed instrument expresses "insurance premium widens" directly (tanker rates? marine insurers?) rather than via the crude beta.

How to resolve

  • Track Saudi-Houthi negotiation news; Alhajji's own base case is that the agreement is restored, which would close this.
  • Verify the insurance mechanism from a primary source — this is the cheapest and highest-value check, and it also validates or kills war-risk-insurance-as-chokepoint-transmission.
  • If armed, the expression is not a crude long (Alhajji's balanced-market view argues against that) but the product/refining leg — see refining-bottleneck-to-refiner-crack-capture — plus cheniere on the energy-security bid.

⚠ Single-source hypothesis. Every fact here comes from one interview with one interested expert (Alhajji sells energy research and recommended LNG/coal names on the same show). He is also the source of a contested claim — that the US deliberately closed Hormuz as statecraft — which this vault records but does not adopt; the Bab el-Mandeb chain is separable from it and should be judged on its own.

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