Yemen's Houthi rebels have announced they are imposing a new maritime embargo against Saudi Arabia in response for a recent attack on Sanaa Airport, and after years of the kingdom leading a blockade of Houthi-controlled Yemeni ports.
A military statement by Houthi spokesman Yahya Saree said the maritime ban on all Saudi shipping will be effective immediately in what he declared as an "equation of 'an eye for an eye.'"
via Middle East EyeHowever, details of what this 'embargo' will look like, in terms of where or what chokepoints the Houthis might seek to blockade were not given.
Last week the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen attacked the Houthi-controlled Sanaa International Airport, threatening a fragile truce that has been in place since 2022. Saudi jets had prevented an Iranian passenger plane from landing there, after the US-Saudi recognized Yemeni government warned against any Iranian planes entering the divided country's airspace.
Within days of that incident, the Houthis reportedly sent missiles on Saudi Arabia - which was a first after years of relative peace. In addition to unveiling the anti-Saudi embargo, the Houthis spokesman warned that if the Saudi siege on Yemen is not lifted, then Houthi armed forces will move towards a full-scale war.
Saree declared, "if Saudi Arabia turns to all-out aggression against Yemen, all of Saudi Arabia's energy facilities and its vital facilities will be targets for missiles and drones."
He described that the blockade of Sanaa airport "is unacceptable and cannot be tolerated" - following the Iran airline incident. Saree vowed to retaliate "to the blockade with a blockade and to respond to all escalation with escalation."
July 13: Yemen's internationally recognized, Saudi-backed government says its forces targeted Sanaa Airport, under Houthi control, to prevent an Iranian aircraft from landing there...
ایرانی طیارے کی لینڈنگ روکنے کے لیے یمنی حکومت کی صنعا ہوائی اڈے پر بمباری
یمن کی بین الاقوامی طور پر تسلیم شدہ حکومت کا کہنا ہے کہ اس کی فورسز نے حوثیوں کے زیرِ کنٹرول صنعا ایئرپورٹ کو نشانہ بنایا تاکہ ایک ایرانی طیارے کو وہاں لینڈ کرنے سے روکا جا سکے۔#Yemen #Iran… pic.twitter.com/N8kugrBrn1
"The Yemeni Armed Forces affirm their complete readiness for all options and any foolish act committed by the reckless Saudi enemy," the statement continued.
"We call upon the people of our great nation to continue the general mobilization and general call to arms, and to be fully prepared for all scenarios and developments, and to support the fronts with fighters."
The "internationally recognized" Yemeni government has long been propped up by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the US, after a lengthy half-decade long UAE/Saudi/US coalition air war failed to dislodge Houthi power. The pro-Saudi government operates out of Aden in southern Yemen, after the country's president fled there a decade ago.
Earlier this month there had been an initial attempted Saudi warplane intercept of an Iranian civilian airliner, which was reportedly carrying Yemenis who had been stranded in Iran back to their home country.
BREAKING: Houthis of Yemen announce a a "maritime embargo" against Saudi Arabia, "effective immediately."
Saudi Arabia has until now exported ~4.5m b/d from Yanbu in the Red Sea, most of it heading South throughout the Bab al-Mandab Strait between Yemen and Djibouti-Eritrea pic.twitter.com/c96Apzh9As
The Houthis at the time of the prior incident said it was "breaking the Saudi-American siege on our people and expelling the occupiers."
As we featured previously, since 2015 Saudi Arabia has imposed a blockade on Yemen's land, sea, and air ports, severely restricting vital commercial and humanitarian imports, including fuel and food.
Tyler Durden Mon, 07/20/2026 - 10:25By Diana DiGangi of UtilityDive,
The Texas Public Utility Commission on Thursday unanimously approved rules that will require large computational loads, like data centers and crypto-mining facilities, within the Electric Reliability Council of Texas footprint to stay stable and connected to the grid through disruptions.
Modern computational loads, Kenteel Engineering said in a June blog, are “engineered to protect extremely sensitive and expensive equipment,” and during a voltage dip are programmed to disconnect or enter momentary cessation.
However, this presents a reliability problem, Kenteel Engineering said, as when “several hundred — or several thousand — megawatts of computational load all detect the same sag and drop simultaneously, the grid experiences a sudden, large loss of demand.”
“As LCLs increase on the ERCOT System, similar events would be expected to increase in magnitude and frequency, leading to frequency instability and other reliability problems absent frequency and voltage ride-through requirements,” the Texas PUC rules state.
The rules don’t immediately penalize facilities that fail to ride through a qualifying event, Kenteel Engineering noted, but instead put them “on the clock” to investigate and report the root cause within 90 days of ERCOT’s request, “develop a corrective plan within 90 days of completing that investigation, and implement the approved plan within 180 days unless ERCOT grants more time.”
“Overriding all of that, if ERCOT judges that continued operation poses an imminent risk to local or system reliability, it can order the [large electric load] — and keep it disconnected — until the Customer demonstrates compliance to ERCOT’s satisfaction,” Kenteel Engineering said.
In comments, the Data Center Coalition argued that the PUC lacks the statutory authority to “impose the binding and ongoing operational requirements contained in [the rules] directly on retail customers — a category of entity that the Legislature deliberately excluded from ERCOT’s authority.”
Texas Industrial Energy Consumers made similar comments, writing, “Unlike Market Participants who must agree to comply with and be bound by all ERCOT Protocols as a condition of participating in the wholesale market, pure retail loads have made no such commitment and have no such obligation.”
TIEC also argued that ERCOT lacks the expertise to “develop reasonable operational requirements for complex, costly manufacturing equipment. It is completely inappropriate to give ERCOT the ability to directly regulate businesses who are not participating in the wholesale market and are not otherwise regulated entities.”
In a staff memo from the PUC’s R. Floyd Walker, senior counsel with the commission’s market analysis division, Walker dismissed concerns over the PUC’s authority. Those commenters “seem to be working under the assumption that explicitly statutory authority is required,” he wrote. “Staff respectfully submits that delegated authority is sufficient.”
“There is no debate that voltage and frequency excursions on the transmission network create reliability concerns, which increase with the interconnection of each new large computational load,” Walker said. “Accordingly, if approved by the Commission, the provisions of [the rules] would be within ERCOT’s authority by virtue of that approval.”
Comments from the Texas Blockchain Council argued that proposed mitigation approaches for LCLs, such as the installation of dedicated battery storage, “are neither practical nor economical at scale.”
“While battery solutions have been suggested, we are not aware of any that have been successfully tested or deployed at the scale required for [LCLs],” the group wrote. “Even if pursued, mandating dedicated batteries for each facility would be unlikely to fully resolve the underlying technical challenges and would impose substantial costs, currently estimated at more than $1.6 million per MW, making such an approach economically prohibitive for most operations.”
ERCOT staff approved of the rules, writing in a market impact statement that they provide “necessary requirements to reduce the reliability risk posed by LCLs unexpectedly tripping or transferring to backup generation when frequency and voltage excursions within a specified range occur.”
In official comments, ERCOT wrote that LCL loss wasn’t a hypothetical, and ERCOT “has experienced 28 events involving LCL trips of at least 100 MW due to voltage and frequency excursions since the beginning of 2023. This risk will increase exponentially with the significant growth of LCLs expected in the ERCOT Region.”
Developers have requested studies for more than 438 GW of large load projects within ERCOT’s footprint, and “even if only a small fraction of these projects materialize, this will significantly increase the risk that cascading outages could occur due to LCL failures to ride through typical voltage or frequency disturbances,” ERCOT said.
Tyler Durden Mon, 07/20/2026 - 10:10