Another oil tanker is burning in the Red Sea, another projectile that found its target in one of the busiest maritime chokepoints in the world. The Houthis from Yemen say they hit two Saudi tankers - the Encelia and the Layla - with ballistic and cruise missiles, in the name of a naval blockade against Saudi Arabia. What began as a local war in a poor Arab country has long since grown into a risk measured in barrels and in petrol prices across half the world.

According to maritime security sources, the tanker Encelia was directly hit around 70 nautical miles southwest of the Saudi port of Al Shuqaiq, somewhere around 20:00 GMT. A fire broke out on the ship, which the crew managed to put out. The UK Maritime Trade Operations agency (UKMTO) reported that the captain had reported „an unknown projectile that caused a fire on the ship, extinguished by the crew”. For now there are no reported casualties or ecological damage.

The numbers are what tell the real story. Five tankers changed their route at once after the Houthis warned them to avoid Saudi ports, and two of them named the Suez Canal as their new destination. With every attack like this, ship insurance jumps, the routes get longer, and in the end someone pays the cost - usually not the one who fires.

The Red Sea is not an abstract dot on the map. Through it passes part of the oil and goods that reach European ports too, the Balkan ones included. When the sea becomes a risk zone, the effect does not stay in Yemen - it travels with every ship that has to go around, to wait, or to pay more to get through.

And the world, as usual, looks with one eye. The great powers condemn when the tanker is theirs, and stay silent when it is not. The Houthis know well that control over a single narrow chokepoint is worth more than any declaration - a lesson the Balkans, with their bridges, crossings and corridors, understands without translation.

The question that remains is not whether there will be another attack like this, but how long we will keep pretending that these flames on a distant sea have nothing to do with us. Every tanker hit is a reminder that the global economy hangs on a few narrow passages - and that a single rocket is enough to shake the whole chain.