BP Pauses All Red Sea Shipments After Rebel Attacks Transcript

Let’s get more on that news concerning shipping routes through the Red Sea, which have been under threat from rebels operating out of Yemen in recent weeks. They’ve been attacking commercial shipping they believe is bound for Israel. Now, the all-giant BP has joined a growing number of companies announcing that they’re stopping all shipments using that route because of safety concerns. Well, BBC Verify’s Merlyn Thomas has more on that.

A month ago, this ship was hijacked. Footage released by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebel group shows them successfully capturing the Galaxy leader cargo ship in the Red Sea. Now, the group supports Hamas and they say they’re targeting all ships with ownership links to Israel, as well as any shipping going in or out of Israeli ports. And the Houthi group still has that boat. So we spotted it here on satellite imagery off the coast of Yemen. Now, this is the best image we have from satellite image provider Planet. It was taken on Wednesday last week.

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Now, these attacks are a huge problem for big companies because this region is crucial to global trade. So the Red Sea is one of the world’s most important routes for oil and fuel shipments. Now, any ship passing through Suez to or from the Indian Ocean has to come this way. About 17,000 ships and 10% of global trade passes through it every year. Now, if you want to avoid it, ships have to take a much longer route and they have to go all the way down south, around south of Africa, and up again. And that’s what several big companies like BP and Maersk are going to have to do now that they’ve suspended their shipping through the Red Sea.

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Over the last month, since the Galaxy leader was successfully hijacked, there have been several attempts by Houthi rebels to board ships like this one, the Central Park. Now, the attack on this one was repelled by a US warship and a Japanese military vessel in the area. The Houthi rebel group have also attacked others with drones and missiles. Now, have a look at this. This just shows you just how busy the shipping route is today, and we’ll have to wait and see what impact this has on the trade and the precarious situation in the Red Sea, not only on the price of oil as deliveries are delayed, but also on whether their other products will make their destinations in time for Christmas.

Thomas from the BBC Verify Hub there. Well, Dr. Sarah Schiffling is a supply chain expert from the Hanken School of Economics. She explained earlier to me that the impact of shipping operations, or she explained, I should say, the impact of shipping operations in the Red Sea.

What we’ve seen over the last couple of days, several of the big shipping lines have halted their operations in the Red Sea going into the Suez Canal from the south, and that was one after the other, after several attacks by missiles, by drones on merchant vessels in this very, very small part of the Red Sea on the southern end, close to Yemen.

Okay. And what do you think is going to happen next, then?

Well, we’ve already seen a response with the US Military saying that they’re going to up their presence in the area to really reassure the merchant vessels. And that operation is called Prosperity Guardian, which tells you what it’s all about. It is about protecting those important supply chains because so much of global trade goes through the Suez Canal. It’s about 12% of the total global trade volume. That’s a huge amount we heard there, BP oil vessels, but also lots of container ships that really contain everything that’s coming from Asia into Europe, and increasingly also Asia to North America because the Panama Canal has been having issues for months now.

So are there other ways to reroute it and how will that impact international supply chains? Because I assume any other avenues are going to take a lot longer.

Absolutely. The way around is all the way around Africa. So you’re going all the way down to South Africa and all the way back north again, and that adds one to two weeks of time to the journey, and of course, costs a lot more. There’s also some security risks maybe there, as well as weather, as well. That’s really why the Suez Canal was built in the first place, to avoid this very, very long detour all the way around the Continent of Africa.

Are these attacks new or have they been happening in the last few months?

They have been going on for awhile, but they’ve really stepped up now. So over this month in December, there’s been about nine attacks on merchant vessels and there’s been a couple of other missiles drones that were intercepted by the military presence in the area. So it has really been stepping up because the Houthi rebels are saying they’re supporting Hamas in the conflict with Israel. So that has really been two geopolitical crises tied into each other. And of course, there’s been a civil war going in Yemen for nine years now. So there is a larger picture here.

And have we had any sort of reaction from any of the regional players, Iran or other nations?

There have been statements from Iran, especially about the stepping up of the military presence in the area, very much saying that this is a region that is within their sphere of influence. So of course, this is not something that they welcome. And other regional players are involved in ensuring the ongoing trade through the Red Sea and Suez Canal. Of course, this is very interesting for particularly Egypt, which owns the Suez Canal, runs the Suez Canal, and of course, benefits from the trade through this route.