Coalition plans to return Chinese company accused of looting Yemeni oil to Hadramout
ADEN, May 16 (YPA) – The “government” backed by the Saudi -led coalition is seeking to return a Chinese company accused of looting crude oil to the provinces of Shabwa and Hadramout.
Political sources familiar with the matter said the Minister of Oil in the pro-coalition government met on Sunday, with the director of the Chinese company Sinopec in Dubai, to discuss the company’s resumption of work in the oil and gas sectors.
Sinopec was the operator of Block 71 in Hadramout, as well as being a partner in Sector S2 – in Al-Uqla area in Shabwa.
The sources indicated that the minister welcomed the resumption of the work of the “Sinopec” company, inviting it to search for new investments in Yemen.
Oil experts in Yemen accused the Chinese company Sinopec of plundering crude oil from Yemen in the sectors it controls, stressing that it has a partnership relationship with Saudi Aramco, after Sinopec achieved a profit growth of 41% during the first half of 2017.
The company’s call to Shabwa and Hadramout came after the company’s agent, called Mohsen Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar, the son of a senior leader in the Islah Party, sold the agency of “Sinopec” to the son of the head of the Saudi-formed Presidential Leadership Council,” Abdul Hafez Rashad al-Alimi, after the Islah Party militants were expelled from Shabwa province in last August.
Al-Alimi’s son was recently able to establish commercial interests for becoming as an agent for a number of foreign oil companies in Yemen in the field of oil services and exploration, including the Chinese Gecko Oil Drilling Company and the Chinese Sinopec Company, which owns the oil production contract in Sector No. 1 in Yemen, and other companies that carry out their activities in other countries.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE are trying to impose their control over the oil provinces in eastern Yemen, relying on notables affiliated with the coalition, such as Amr bin Habrish affiliated with Saudi Arabia in the districts of Wadi and the desert of Hadramout, and Awad Al-Wazir backed by the UAE in Shabwa, in addition to the leaders of the Islah Party in Marib.
AA