Brothers' noise about "Balhaf" to hide the looting of billions of oil and gas revenues
English - Saturday 17 July 2021 الساعة 08:35 am
Aden, NewsYemen, special:
With the great collapse of the local currency, during the past days, the Brotherhood and its tools re-attacked the UAE and linked what happened to the currency to the halt in the process of exporting gas from the Balhaf facility in Shabwa.
The Brotherhood media and leaders loyal to it re-talked about the Emirati presence in the facility, claiming that the facility’s cessation is the main factor in the recent deterioration of the local currency.
The parliamentarian close to the Brotherhood and the former governorate of Taiz, Ali Al-Maamari, claimed in a post on "Facebook", that "the revenues from the export of gas through the Balhaf gas facilities alone are enough to inject vitality into the Yemeni economy."
Al-Maamari added that Balhaf's revenues "enable the government to obtain the minimum amount of hard currency to maintain the value of the local currency, pay salaries regularly, and even rearm the national army," he said.
Al-Maamari renewed his attack against the UAE, calling on the government to what he called "the exploitation of state resources and the removal of the UAE's hand from the ports and oil and gas sectors."
Simultaneously, Brotherhood-affiliated media published a story attributed to a government source in which he said that “the UAE refuses to leave the Balhaf facility and port.” He also claimed the French company Total, which supervises the export of liquefied gas at the facility, refused to resume gas export operations due to the presence of the UAE.
The news that was circulated to the Brotherhood's media was concluded with a statement claiming that "the Balhaf facility provided the state treasury before the last war in the country and the Houthi coup in 2015 with more than $4 billion annually."
These allegations are refuted by the figures contained in the general budget for the year 2014, which is the last budget for Yemen that was submitted to Parliament before the war. It amounted to 4 billion dollars.
The budget submitted by the Basindoha government in late 2013, which was under the control of the Brotherhood, estimated the revenues of exported gas during 2014 at about 136 billion Yemeni riyals, equivalent at the time to only 680 million US dollars.
While the Brotherhood focuses on gas revenues, it neglects to talk about the rest of the important revenues that are under its control, such as oil revenues exported from production fields in Marib, Hadramout and Shabwa, all under the control of the Brotherhood, whose revenues in 2013 amounted to about 389 billion Yemeni riyals, equivalent to About two billion dollars at the time.
Despite the passage of more than 3 years since the resumption of oil exports from the Hadramawt and Shabwa fields later, the legitimacy has refused to this day to disclose oil export revenues or the real production volume exported from these fields.
While the Prime Minister claims that the volume of daily production ranges between 60-70 thousand, economic sources confirm that the number is greater than that and that it exceeds 100,000 barrels per day, and that the volume of production from the fields from which production has resumed this year from Wadi Hadramout is more than 40 thousand barrels.
Last April, the government exported the second shipment of oil from Al-Daba port in Hadramout, at an amount of $150 million, and it is the second shipment since the beginning of the year with the same amount, meaning that the oil export revenues during four months amounted to $300 million, which means that it exceeds $1.2 billion as the lowest estimate this year With the recent rise in oil prices, the price of a barrel has crossed the $70 barrier.
Among the files that the Brotherhood is trying to cover with the noise of Balhaf, are the revenues of the local gas produced in Marib, which the Brotherhood’s governorate authorities refuse to disclose or supply to the Central Bank of Yemen since 2016 AD until today.
Returning to the 2014 budget, domestic gas revenues during 2013 amounted to about 39 billion Yemeni riyals, equivalent to $200 million, while the price of a gas cylinder was about 1250 riyals, and its price is currently 2,350 riyals. As for the price of a gas cylinder for cars, its price has reached Recently, in the liberated governorates, it has reached the 10,000 Yemeni riyals barrier.
