Yemen’s Supreme Political Council: War Coalition Plunders Over 85% of Oil, Gas Revenues

By Staff, Agencies

The head of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council says the leaders of the war coalition against Yemen plunder more than 85 percent of the country’s oil and gas revenues.

Mahdi al-Mashat made the remarks in a meeting with Yemeni Prime Minister Abdel-Aziz bin Habtour in Sana’a on Sunday, according to Yemen’s al-Masirah media network.

Mashat said the war coalition countries, led by the US and Saudi Arabia, are seeking to increase the suffering of the Yemeni citizens through their suffocating siege, seizure of ships containing fuel, food and pharmaceuticals as well as their economic war.

He maintained that the US aims to raise the prices of fuel by its acts of piracy and arbitrary measures.

The US wants to weaken Yemen’s national currency in the context of the economic war targeting all Yemenis, he added.

Through such measures, Mashat said, the war coalition is seeking to bring the Yemeni people, who reject the occupation of their land and the policies of impoverishment being practiced on them, to their knees.

He also praised the Sanaa government’s performance in providing services to Yemeni citizens and alleviating their suffering.

The director general of the Yemen Petroleum Company [YPC] said on Sunday that the fuel derivatives that have reached the port of Hudaydah since the beginning of 2021 constitute only a very small fraction of the actual needs of the country.

Adnan Al-Jarmozi said in a statement that the country needs 1.36 million tons of gasoline and 1.54 million tons of diesel during the year.

He explained that the port of Hudaydah has received only 27,893 tons of gasoline and 57,982 tons of diesel, which respectively amount to 4% and 7% of the country’s needs.

According to Hayel Muhammad Qatshi, the director of resources at the Hudaydah Oil Company, all cargoes of fuel derivatives seized by the war coalition are intended for public consumption with due permits from the United Nations.

Muhammad Abu Bakr Ishaq, the head of the Board of Directors of the Red Sea Ports Corporation, also noted that the war coalition’s insistence on seizing fuel ships is increasing the suffering of the Yemeni people.

“We are at the beginning of an academic year and our children are suffering from power outages as a result of the aggression's piracy on fuel ships,” he said.

Yemen has been beset by violence and chaos since 2015, when Saudi Arabia and its allies launched a devastating war against the poor country to reinstall Yemen’s former government of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi in Sanaa and crush the Ansarullah movement.

The war, accompanied by a tight siege, has failed to reach its goals and killed hundreds of thousands of Yemeni people, putting millions more at risk of starvation by destroying much of the country’s infrastructure.

In the meantime, the Western powers, particularly the US and the UK, have supported Saudi Arabia and continued to sell weapons and military equipment to Riyadh throughout the war.

According to al-Masirah, the war coalition continued to bomb a number of Yemeni provinces on Sunday, injuring civilians and damaging public and private property.

The air raids targeted Marib province’s Sirwah, Mudaghl and Majzar districts as well as Saadah province’s Kitaf district.