The export of new oil shipments raises the question about the fate of the revenues
English - Tuesday 09 August 2022 الساعة 09:30 am
Hadramout, NewsYemen, private:
Government sources revealed the export of a new oil shipment at the Dabba oil port on the Hadhramaut coast, with the continuing uncertainty about the oil file and the fate of its export revenues.
On Saturday, a Korean oil tanker docked at the Dabba oil port on the Hadhramaut coast to transport a new shipment of liquefied crude estimated at 2.2 million barrels, with a value of about $200 million.
This shipment is the fourth shipment of oil exported through the Dabba port with the same quantity, and the seventh shipment has been exported from the oil fields in Hadramawt and Shabwa since the beginning of this year until late July, according to what was revealed in the media.
Previously, about 3 million barrels of oil were exported through three shipments from the Al-Nashima oil port in Shabwa Governorate, bringing the total that was exported through the Al-Daba and Al-Nushaima ports to about 12 million barrels of oil, with a value of more than one billion US dollars.
Oil prices this year witnessed a big jump compared to last year due to the Russian-Ukrainian war, and the price of a barrel of oil during the past seven months ranged between 90-120 dollars per barrel.
This comes in light of the Yemeni government’s reluctance, since the resumption of oil production and export in mid-2016, to officially disclose the volume of oil production today, while the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) confirms in its 2021 report that Yemen’s oil production amounted to 115 thousand barrels of oil daily.
And with the government's reluctance to disclose clearly about the annual oil export revenues. A report issued by the Central Bank last March revealed that oil export revenues during the past year 2021 amounted to 1.4 billion dollars.
Ambiguity also surrounds the fate of these revenues and the reason behind the fact that they are still supplied to a special account in the National Bank of Saudi Arabia instead of the Central Bank in Aden, which suffers from a scarcity of foreign exchange reserves, which is the main reason for the collapse of the local currency in the liberated areas.
During a television interview in late July, a member of the Presidency Council, Sultan al-Arada, admitted the matter, justifying this by the events that took place in Aden, stressing that the matter was just a "procedural process" and that the account was subject to the government's disposal.
