The value of the Yemeni crude oil revenues looted by the Saudi-led coalition during the period 2016-2022 amounted to more than 14 billion and 450 million dollars.
According to the official Yemeni News Agency (Saba) in Sana’a, a private source said that “the coalition and Saudi-backed forces are looting Yemeni crude oil by giant ships that come to Yemeni ports, at a rate of at least one shipment per month, as shown by the international traffic monitoring sites.”
The source added that, since the beginning of this year, the number of ships that looted Yemeni crude oil from export ports in the coalition-occupied provinces has been monitored.
On the 19th of last January, the ship “Politaris” looted 2.5 million barrels from the port of Dhabba in Hadramout province, worth 217 million dollars and headed to China, while the ship “Pantanassa ” in February, loaded two million barrels from the same port, with an estimated value of $200 million, and in the same month, one million barrels, with an estimated value of $106 million, were stolen.
On April 10, the coalition and its mercenaries looted more than 2.3 million barrels of oil from the port of Dhabba, worth $267 million, which were transported via the “Politaris” ship to China, and in the same month, the ship “SEAVELVET” loaded one million barrels of looted oil from Al-Noshima port in Shabwa province, valued at 106 million dollars, and headed for India.
Last May, the giant oil tanker “Politaris” arrived at the port of Al-Shihr in Hadramout and loaded more than two million barrels of oil, with a value of more than $270 million, equivalent to 162 billion Yemeni riyals.
During the month of June, 400,000 barrels were stolen from Radhum port in Shabwa, valued at 44 million dollars, which were transported via the “Gulf Aetos” ship, and in the same month, one million barrels were looted from the Al-Noshima port in Shabwa, valued at 114 million Dollars, via the Emirates ship “lSABAELL”.
In terms of numbers, the value of what was looted of Yemeni crude oil during the period from January to June 2022 amounted to one billion and 324 million dollars, without benefiting the Yemeni people, who suffer from living and humanitarian crises and the shortage of oil derivatives.
The source revealed that the total value of what was sold of Yemeni crude oil during the month of May alone amounted to about 180 billion riyals, which is enough to pay the salaries of state employees for about three months.
According to the OPEC report, Yemen’s exports of crude oil during 2016 amounted to 8.64 million barrels, at a rate of 24,000 barrels per day, and rose to 25,560,000 barrels in 2017, at a rate of 71,000 barrels per day.
The OPEC report stated that Yemen’s oil exports rose to 33,840,000 barrels in 2018, and the volume of exports stopped at a fixed number in 2019 and 2021, reaching 102,600,000 barrels.
On the other hand, Aden government continues to mislead and obscure the actual figures of the volume of Yemen’s exports of crude oil and the destination to which these huge revenues go, at a time when it is still refusing to pay the salaries of state employees.
Saudi-backed government had admitted that the revenues from the sale of crude oil rose, during 2021, by 100 percent, to reach more than 1.4 billion dollars, compared to 710.5 million dollars in 2020, while the value of what was sold of crude oil during 2020 and 2021 amounted to more than 2.2 billion dollars, equivalent to 1.3 trillion Yemeni riyals, which covers the salaries of state employees for 18 months.
According to a report by the OPEC and the Maritime Traffic Monitoring website, Yemen’s revenues from oil exports during the years 2016-2021 amounted to 13,025,761,000 dollars, and this figure far exceeds what was disclosed by Aden government.
The maritime traffic website, 39 cruises were monitored for seven oil ships that entered during the year 2021 to the port of Bir Ali in Shabwa province, and the port of Al-Shihr in Hadramout, and they left loaded with crude oil to the UAE, Singapore, China, Malaysia and Egypt.
While the Yemeni people suffer from a stifling crisis of the domestic gas and its high prices, the coalition and Saudi-backed forces continue to manipulate this substance, whether by monopolizing it or looting its revenues and raising its prices.
As the domestic gas is directly related to the daily life of citizens, this substance is still targeted by the coalition and Saudi-backed forces in the context of their war on the Yemeni people and the looting of the country’s wealth.
According to the Aden government, the total amount of domestic gas sold during the month of May alone reached 2,325 trailers, containing 4.8 million cylinders; the value of one cylinder is 3,568 riyals, which means that household gas revenues, which were collected by the coalition last May, reached 17.2 billion riyals.
The Saudi-sponsored forces were not satisfied with raising the prices of domestic gas, but they also looted the proceeds of maintaining gas cylinders over the past years without performing any maintenance on them, despite the risks that damaged cylinders pose to the lives of citizens.
Despite the large sums looted by the coalition and Saudi-backed forces from Yemeni oil and gas revenues, the salaries of state employees have been cut off for nearly six years, following the transfer of central bank functions to Aden, in September 2016, and the seizure of those revenues by the Saudi coalition and its loyal forces.
The oil and gas sector constitutes the mainstay of the national economy, as it covers 80 percent of the state’s general budget, covers the salaries of public sector employees and provides hard currency.
In this regard, Minister of Oil and Minerals Ahmed Daris confirms that the direct and indirect losses of the oil and minerals sector as a result of the Saudi coalition and blockade amounted to more than 45 billion dollars.
Daris points out that Yemen’s oil and gas wealth is still being looted and robbed by the Saudi coalition and its loyal forces until the moment, noting that the coalition’s control of the oil sector and the looting of its revenues deprived the state of 75 percent of the resources that supplied the public treasury with hard currencies.
He explained that Yemen’s losses due to the disruption of liquefied natural gas production and the transformation of Balhaf gas facility into a military barracks for the Emirati occupation forces amounted to 2.7 trillion riyals.
Even with the suffering and humanitarian crisis that the Yemeni people are going through, which is the worst in the world, the Saudi coalition and its loyal forces continue to loot billions of dollars of Yemen’s oil and gas wealth, without regard for the suffering of the Yemeni people.
