Emergency Flight to the East… How Did Jubail and Dammam Ports Deepen Saudi Arabia’s Logistical Crisis?

The escalating naval blockade and the avoidance of international shipping lines to Saudi ports on the Red Sea, such as Yanbu and Jazan, forced Riyadh to take an emergency option with an exorbitant strategic cost.

Follow-ups – Al-Khabar Al-Yemeni:

The Kingdom resorted to intensively redirecting commercial unloading and shipping movement towards the Arabian Gulf ports, specifically Dammam and Jubail ports, in an attempt to circumvent the maritime isolation in the west and secure the flow of goods through the eastern facade.

However, this emergency shift quickly produced a new logistical predicament. The sudden influx of thousands of container trucks caused a suffocating paralysis and congestion at the berths and storage yards in the east after exceeding their capacity. This accumulation forced companies to swallow hefty delay and demurrage fines and turned the maritime alternatives into a choke point that slowed customs clearance and disrupted the regularity of supply chains.

The financial crisis doubled due to total reliance on land transport via trucks to move goods and production supplies over arduous distances exceeding 1,300 kilometers to reach the western and southern regions. This field pressure caused a record jump in domestic shipping prices exceeding 40%, burdening commercial sectors with uncalculated operating expenses and proving that Riyadh’s turn towards the Gulf was nothing but a costly option that deepens its economic bleeding.