2024 Red Sea disruption: rerouting and diesel delivery
Commercial carriers, petroleum exporters in the Middle East and western India, and importing terminals and distributors in Europe
What happened?
Using Vortexa tanker tracking, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that crude oil and petroleum product flows through Bab el-Mandeb averaged 4.0 million barrels a day in January through August 2024, down from 8.7 million in full-year 2023. Flows around the Cape of Good Hope averaged 9.2 million barrels a day for the same 2024 window, up from 6.0 million in 2023. EIA identifies diesel and jet fuel, as well as crude, among affected northbound cargoes.
How could the hypotheses work together?
- Supply Chain Resilience. Check updated arrival estimates and the ability to replenish usable fuel before a stockout.
- Economic Interdependence. Record the separate costs and service effects on exporters, carriers and recipients.
- Information Integrity. Check the source and time of arrival estimates and document corrections.
What outcome could we estimate?
Replay a dated delivery disruption with the same starting diesel inventory, demand, cargoes and receiving capacity in all three arrangements. Compare how early each process can verify a delayed arrival, how many days of local stock remain, and how much verified finished diesel reaches civilian distributors by the deadline. Test a delayed delivery and an erroneous warning as separate exercises.
The EIA numbers compare part of 2024 with full-year 2023. These are aggregate flows of crude and petroleum products. They cannot match individual cargoes across routes, isolate diesel receipts, establish the impact on local availability or show an effect from shared information or AI.
What evidence would we need?
- Use dated public or authorized aggregate records for port arrivals, accepted finished diesel, local reserve, daily demand and actual delivery capacity.
- Keep barrels per day on a trade route separate from barrels received on a specific day. Track missed deliveries, unnecessary responses and delay costs alongside the average.
- Check the discrepancy between the predicted and actual arrival using the same observation cutoff, and document fallback if the shared information channel fails.
Compare current practice, human cooperation, and AI assistance Test whether the steps help or hinder each other
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