The Houthi advance in Yemen raises concerns about a key shipping choke point

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The capture of the Red Sea port of Mokha and a strategic island by Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen brings their forces to the heart of a key choke point for the global economy: the Bab el-Mandeb Strait leading out of the Red Sea.

The Houthis took Mokha on Thursday and on Friday captured Mayun, also known as Perim, off Yemen's coast, two officials said, in a swift advance that extends their reach near one of the world’s key commercial lanes.

The strait had been a vital route for crude oil supplies from Saudi Arabia to Asia after shipping through the Strait of Hormuz was restricted due to threat of Iranian attack — until Houthi targeting of Saudi tankers largely ended that safety valve.

The Houthi advance is focusing renewed attention on the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and further risks to shipping there, despite efforts by the Houthis to reassure shipowners that vessels other than those covered by their embargo on Saudi-linked shipping remain safe.

The Strait of Hormuz was long the main highway for Saudi oil. But when Iran choked off most ship traffic at the Strait of Hormuz, the Saudis ramped up shipments through a pipeline running across the desert to Yanbu on the Red Sea.

Oil loaded on tankers in Yanbu could head out of the Red Sea through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait and then east to Asia. That helped the Saudis maintain a share of their exports to customers there.

The Saudi Ministry of Energy said Friday that it had shut down the pipeline as “a precautionary measure” after it was attacked the previous day but did not specify who carried out the attacks.

The Red Sea route helped keep global oil prices in check, along with other improvised alternatives. In recent weeks the U.S. military has guided tankers through the Strait of Hormuz in defiance of Iranian demands that ships pass through a vetting lane near the Iranian coastline. And the United Arab Emirates has used a pipeline to Fujairah on the Gulf of Oman to skirt the Strait of Hormuz.

Houthi attacks on shipping through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait started in late 2023 over Israel’s war in Gaza, leading many companies to abandon the route because of safety concerns. Traffic overall remains down some 60% from levels before then, although it remains a key freight route for goods moving between Asia and Europe.

In August, alternative routes helped restore some two-thirds of the roughly 15 million barrels that transited Hormuz before the war. That took some of the economic pressure off the U.S. amid politically sensitive higher gas prices ahead of the midterm elections.

However, Houthi threats have weighed heavily on Saudi oil exports in the Red Sea. In August, Red Sea oil loadings fell from 3.8 million barrels per day to 2.2 million barrels per day, according to the International Energy Agency. Overall, Saudi supply fell 2.3 million barrels per day to 6 million barrels, the lowest in three decades, according to the IEA.

By now, “Saudi shipping has largely routed away from this risk anyway,” said Richard Meade, editor-in-chief of Lloyd's List.

While the Houthi advance “doesn't change the immediate risk profile" because Saudi and Israeli shipping is already high risk, it does raise the question of whether the Houthis, who have insisted that other shipping is safe, will expand their threats if they face further attack, Meade said.

“It puts the Houthis in a strong position to take further control if they want to,” he said.

Meanwhile, increased attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz this week have put use of the U.S. route on hold. Iran said it attacked 10 ships there Wednesday after the U.S hit five Iranian tankers.

With the Houthis threatening Bab el-Mandeb, Saudi tankers have turned northwest instead of southeast from Yanbu and headed for the Suez Canal.

Tankers that are too big to pass through the canal have offloaded oil at Ain Sokhna in Egypt to a pipeline to Sidi Kerir on the Mediterranean coast, where the oil is picked up by tanker. Some 70% of Yanbu crude exports are now heading that way, either by pipeline or by tanker, according to Lloyd's.

That, however, is a time-consuming and expensive workaround for customers in Asia, since ships must then transit the Mediterranean, pass the Strait of Gibraltar and sail around the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa. The Suez route enables the Saudis to redirect as much as 3 million barrels per day.

But that more than doubles transit time to an Asian destination like South Korea, from 24 days to 54 days, according to senior research analyst Victoria Grabenwöger at energy data firm Kpler.

That adds to the cost, given that tankers cost tens of thousands of dollars per day to charter even in normal times, while prices have risen in some cases above $100,000 per day during the current global energy turmoil.

Foreign and Yemeni seafarers protest against Houthi attacks on vessels in the Bab al-Mandab Strait and along Yemen's Red Sea coast in Mokha, Yemen, Aug. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Abdulnasser Alseddik, File)

A worshipper reads from an oversized Quran at the Al-Shamy Mosque in Houthi-controlled Sanaa, Yemen, Friday, Sept. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Osamah Abdulrahman)

Yemen's Houthi rebels march during a mobilization campaign in Sanaa, Yemen, Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026. (AP Photo)

WASHINGTON (AP) — In a defeat for the Trump administration, a federal court on Friday ruled that the Energy Department exceeded its authority when it forced a Michigan coal-fired power plant to stay open past its scheduled retirement date last year.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright had said the 64-year-old J.H. Campbell Generating Plant was needed to ensure reliable electricity in the region, and he used emergency powers to keep it operating. Environmental groups and three states — Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota — went to court to try to overturn orders keeping the plant online.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with the states and the groups, saying there was no real emergency under the law.

The section of the Federal Power Act that allows emergency orders “is essentially a narrow, last-resort backstop," Appeals Court Judge Cornelia Pillard wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel. Use of emergency authority “is triggered only when there is a need for immediate, essentially last-resort action and the circumstances require action by DOE in particular, as opposed to action by the state or states responsible for resource adequacy," she added.

Reversing the Campbell plant's “long and carefully planned retirement" is "disruptive," Pillard wrote.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said she was relieved the appeals court “threw out DOE’s order that had zero basis in reality.”

Nessel, a Democrat, said her office “has been fighting this unlawful political stunt at every turn, and this ruling proves what we have been saying all along: this administration does not get to invent fake emergencies to bypass the rule of law against the best interests of Michigan residents.”

The Michigan case is one of several legal disputes that have emerged across the country as the Trump administration uses emergency powers to force a half-dozen coal-fired plants to remain open.

The orders, which also apply to plants in Indiana, Colorado, Florida and Washington state, are raising ratepayer bills and adding air and water pollution that could have been avoided, critics say. An oil and gas plant in Pennsylvania was also ordered to keep its turbines running as a hedge against electricity shortages in the mid-Atlantic grid.

President Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency in a January 2025 executive order, citing demand increases from artificial intelligence and data center growth.

An Energy Department spokesperson said the emergency orders — including at Campbell — “prevented blackouts and likely saved hundreds of lives during peak capacity events this past year,” especially severe winter storms in late January and early February.

At the peak of the storms, coal generation in affected regions increased by 25% compared to the previous year, spokeswoman Emily Matthews said. The Campbell plant provided over 650 megawatts — enough power for hundreds of thousands of homes — every day from Jan. 21 to Feb. 1, she said.

The Energy Department "will continue to protect and defend energy security for all Americans,” she said.

Keeping the Michigan plant open beyond its May 2025 retirement has cost about $259 million so far, according to new financial filings. Those losses will likely be paid by families and businesses in the Midwest, opponents of the order say.

Consumers Energy, which operates the Campbell plant, said it was reviewing the court ruling. In the meantime, the utility will keep the plant operating under terms of a recent DOE order that extends its directive through mid-November, spokesman Brian Wheeler said in a statement.

Ted Kelly, U.S. clean energy director at the Environmental Defense Fund, said the court ruling rejected the Trump administration’s nationwide effort to force “unreliable, aging coal plants that are bleeding money and polluting communities to stay online.”

The Energy Department's “unlawful actions attempted to make families and businesses in the Midwest wastefully pay hundreds of millions of dollars for a coal plant that should have been shut down over a year ago,” Kelly said Friday. The Campbell plant and other aging sites are “incredibly expensive, dangerous to our health and break down frequently,” he said.

Sanjay Narayan, a lawyer for the Sierra Club, called the ruling a victory for families across the Midwest who are “paying to keep this old, expensive and dirty power plant online.”

The Trump administration “has been pulling out all the stops to try to bolster dirty and expensive fossil fuels at public expense. This reckless agenda will not succeed,” Narayan said. "We will continue to fight back against the other illegal extensions across the country.”

Associated Press writer Ed White in Detroit contributed to this story.

FILE - An aerial image of Consumer Energy's J.H. Campbell Generating Complex is seen in Ottawa County, Mich., Sept. 21, 2024. (Joel Bissell/Kalamazoo Gazette via AP, File)

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright speaks after the signing of an oil agreement between the US and Venezuela at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Venezuela, Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2026. (AP Photo/Pedro Mattey)