About 300,000 barrels of crude from Saudi Arabia and South Sudan move from ports on the Red Sea to Asia every day, and those flows may be disrupted.

Saudi Arabia has the flexibility to send cargoes from the Persian Gulf instead, but South Sudan doesn’t. Tankers already diverted from the African nation last month.

Unlike neighboring Ethiopia or Uganda, oil-rich South Sudan has never been known as a coffee-producing nation. Its British colonizers grew robusta and arabica, but much of that stopped during decades of conflict that forced people from their homes and made it hard to farm.^{1) 2)}

That could be challenging in South Sudan, where lack of infrastructure and insecurity make it hard to get the coffee out.^{3) 4)}

One truck of 30 tons of coffee has to travel some 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers) to reach the port in Kenya to be shipped. The cost for the first leg of that trip, through Uganda, is more than $7,500, which is up to five times the cost in neighboring countries.^{5) 6)}

During a visit earlier this month to Nzara County in Western Equatoria state — regarded as the country’s breadbasket — residents reminisced to Associated Press reporters about their parents and grandparents growing coffee, yet much of the younger generation hadn’t done it themselves.^{7) 8)}