Page 10 - MEOG Week 45 2021
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MEOG POLICY & SECURITY MEOG
Yemen shakes up oil firm leadership
YEMEN YEMENI President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi relaunched activities in the country.
this week appointed new executives at two state- Baaboud noted that a 3D seismic survey had
owned oil companies as fighting intensified been carried out over an area of 269 square km in
between government and Iranian-backed mili- Block 9, with exploration wells also drilled there
tants in the oil-rich Ma’rib Governorate. in recent months, marking the first exploratory
Ammar Nasser Al-Awlaki was appointed as drilling since the outbreak of civil conflict in
general manager of the Yemen General Cor- 2015.
poration for Oil, Gas and Mineral Resources Oil production peaked at 441,000 barrels per
(YOGC), while Mohammed Yaslam was made day in 2001 but had fallen to just 16,000 bpd in
an executive director of Aden Refinery Co. 2018 as IOCs put their operations under force
The moves followed the appointment by Oil majeure. Baaboud told Asharq Al-Awsat that
Minister Abdulsalam Baaboud of Saleh Al-Jariri production was averaging 55,000 bpd and noted
as head of the Aden Oil Co., taking over from that work is ongoing to resume production at
Aden Governor Ahmed Lamlas. Block 5 for export through a new pipeline. This
Unsurprisingly, the UAE-backed Southern will add roughly 20,000-25,000 bpd during the
Transitional Council (STC), which has mili- early production phase.
tary and security control over Aden, rejected He said: “The government is deploying excep-
the appointments. “STC rejects Hadi’s decisions tional efforts to face many of the challenges
and all their consequences,” spokesperson Ali produced by the coup. As oil is one of the most
Al-Kathiri said on Twitter. important contributors to our national econ-
He added that the moves had violated the omy, the Ministry of Oil and Minerals is work-
Riyadh agreement while “further impeding ing according to clear plans based on a strategic
efforts to complete” the 2019 power-sharing deal vision, the most important pillar of which was
which was sponsored by the United Nations. the completion of the institutional building of
Security officials said that at least 200 fight- the ministry and its units.”
ers were killed last week during clashes between Baaboud added: “In this context, we have
the Iran-backed Houthis and the government re-activated the Petroleum Exploration and
forces in Ma’rib. The majority of those killed are Production Authority (PEPA) in its new head-
believed to have been Houthis. quarters in the temporary capital, Aden. The
In May, then-oil minister Baaboud said that Authority represents the institutional framework
IOCs had resumed their operations in the coun- concerned with the supervision and technical
try as part of efforts to ramp up to pre-war pro- monitoring of operating oil companies.”
duction levels. Meanwhile, the minister noted that the MOM
He said that five international companies has “made great efforts to restore oil production
including oilfield specialists Baker Hughes and in the different blocks”, noting that OMV and
Schlumberger as well as oil producers OMV of Calvalley had resumed operations at Block S1 in
Austria and Canada’s Calvalley Petroleum had Al-Uqlah and Block 9 respectively.
P10 www. NEWSBASE .com Week 45 10•November•2021