Oil tanker explodes near port

Anonymous Saudi official blames blast on bomb-laden boat

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — An oil tanker off Saudi Arabia’s port city of Jiddah suffered an explosion early Monday after being hit by “an external source,” a shipping company said, suggesting another vessel has come under attack off the kingdom amid its yearslong war in Yemen.

The attack on the Singapore-flagged BW Rhine, which had been contracted by the trading arm of the kingdom’s massive Saudi Arabian Oil Co., marks the fourth assault targeting Saudi energy infrastructure in a month.

It also apparently shut down Jiddah port, the most important shipping point for the kingdom, which later said a bomb-laden boat like the remote-controlled ones used by Yemen’s Houthi rebels caused the explosion.

The explosion renews concerns about ship safety in the Red Sea, a crucial transit zone for global shipping and energy supplies that largely had avoided the chaos of regional tensions involving the U.S. and Iran last year.

The BW Rhine had berthed at Jiddah on Saturday, carrying over 60,000 metric tons of unleaded gasoline from an Aramco refinery at Yanbu for consumption in the kingdom, according to the data-analysis firm Refinitiv. The incident appears to have occurred there.

The ship was “hit from an external source whilst discharging,” said Haifna, a tanker company under the BW Group that owns and operates the ship.

The strike caused an explosion and fire on the ship, damaging its hull. All 22 sailors on board escaped without injury, and firefighters extinguished the blaze, Haifna said. Some oil might have polluted the water alongside the ship, though the company said it was still assessing the damage.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Some 12 hours after the attack became public, the state-run Saudi Press Agency ran a statement quoting an anonymous Energy Ministry official blaming the explosion on a bomb-laden boat. It did not blame anyone for the attack.

“These acts of terrorism and vandalism, directed against vital installations, go beyond the kingdom and its vital facilities, to the security and stability of energy supplies to the world and the global economy,” the statement said.