Houthis strike ship with history of hauling Russian oil

Aside from the Dali containership still pinned to a riverbed in Baltimore, the Andromeda Star could lay claim to being the most infamous ship of the year to date.

The tanker (pictured), which was involved in a collision in the Danish Strait last month, and is a regular hauler of Russian oil, became one of the latest targets for the Houthis on Friday. 

The Houthis targeted the Panama-flagged tanker Andromeda Star off Aden with an anti-ship missile in the Red Sea. The ship reported minor damage but it continued its voyage, according to the US Central Command. Another tanker, the Maisha, was also attacked in the same area on Friday but escaped unscathed. 

The Indian Navy was first on the scene to aid the crew of the Andromeda Star with no injuries reported. 

The Houthis resumed their attacks on shipping last Wednesday after a break of more than two weeks, targeting another US military-linked vessel, Maersk Yorktown, and what they described as the Israeli ship MSC Veracruz. More than 80 attacks on merchant ships have been claimed since November last year.

Lars Jensen, the CEO of container shipping consultancy Vespucci Maritime, has been providing daily updates via LinkedIn on the unfolding Red Sea shipping crisis with the Houthis of Yemen.

“The attacks in recent days appear to be quite an escalation compared to the previous two-week hiatus. Whether this was due to some internal deliberate strategy on the part of the Houthis, or whether it reflects that they had temporarily run out of missiles but have now been resupplied is unknown,” he commented over the weekend.

The attacks continued Monday with Ambrey, a British maritime security specialist, reporting this morning Ambrey of an incident northwest of Mocha. Details of the incident have yet to be revealed.

The case of the Andromeda Star tanker is of particular interest to regular followers of the so-called shadow fleet hauling Russian oil around the world. 

The 16-year-old aframax was bought last November by a Seychelles company called Algae Marine. It was involved in a collision with a Bulgarian general cargo ship called Peace last month in the Danish Strait, prompting much debate in Denmark about cracking down on tankers carrying Russian oil through the waterway, something that is now back in the headlines as Bloomberg is reporting the ship’s insurance documents were not valid and the vessel’s emergency generator was found to be faulty. 

Littoral states around the Baltic are waging a diplomatic campaign to get other countries to back a greater crackdown on Russia’s shadow fleet passing through the region, concerned about the potential for environmental catastrophe with a number of near-disasters reported among the ageing fleet of tankers over the past year.

Foreign ministers from the eight Nordic-Baltic grouping of countries met on the Swedish island of Gotland earlier this month to discuss how to tackle the Russian fleet.

Swedish foreign minister Tobias Billstrom has hinted that the upcoming latest EU sanctions package would target Russia’s shadow fleet.