From the production fields to the export reservoir.. Houthi and the "Safer" battle
English - Sunday 04 June 2023 الساعة 04:39 pm
Aden, NewsYemen, Ammar Ali Ahmed:
#Yemen_gas_for salaries.. Under this hashtag, Muhammad Ali al-Houthi, a prominent leader of the Houthi group, tweeted on "Twitter" to talk about the revenues of local gas produced from the oil fields in Safer in Marib, recalling his group's demands that it be allocated to the payment of salaries in areas under its control.
The efforts exerted regionally and internationally to reach a preliminary agreement to stop the war in Yemen, which broke out 8 years ago, are witnessing several obstacles on the part of the Houthi group and the conditions and demands it poses for acceptance of that, on top of these demands is the sharing of oil and gas revenues produced in the liberated areas with the legitimate government under the pretext of paying salaries in the areas they control.
The Houthi leader indicated in a subsequent tweet that his talk about Safer gas and its revenues had previously been referred to in the group's "vision of a comprehensive solution" in March of 2021, which proposed distributing oil and gas revenues to "all Yemeni families," which was later translated by the group. During recent negotiations, it was proposed to share these revenues "according to population density."
What attracts attention in this vision presented by the group was the item it allocated on the issue of the floating oil tank "Safer" off the coast of Hodeidah, which clarifies the Houthi group's position of refusing for years to respond to all international solutions and appeals to save the tank and unload the oil from inside it to prevent the occurrence of the largest pollution disaster. environment in the world, says the United Nations.
Where the group stressed in its vision that there is a plan to extract oil from the Safer tanker or tanker "in a safe way, including the return of oil pumping to the tanker through the Safer-Ras Issa pipeline" in Hodeidah, which is what the United Nations is currently working on with its plan to save the Safer tanker, which is expected to start. them in the coming days.
This plan, which was approved by the group after years of rejection, is based on unloading the oil from “Safer”, which exceeds one million barrels, to another tanker that the United Nations purchased for $ 55 million, and it will replace the “Safer”, which is expected to be towed to a “scrapping yard.” As the plan says, take it apart for scrap.
The Houthi group believes that this plan will guarantee it its main goal of the series of blackmailing it with the Safer file, by obtaining a new oil tanker to replace it as a floating tank that can later resume oil exports through the "Saffer Pipeline - Ras Issa," which was stated by Muhammad Ali Al-Houthi in his tweet. In it, he commented on the arrival of the Dutch ship, which assisted in the process of unloading the Safer reservoir, last week, at Ras Issa port.
Al-Houthi said, speaking of the Dutch ship: "If it does not play its role to serve the Yemeni people in exporting oil, then it is nothing but a new witness to the criminal blockade."
The speech of the Houthi leader may make his group's recent move to dispense with Safer gas in conjunction with the start of the operation to rescue the Safer reservoir and replace it with another oil tanker, a clear indication of the group's upcoming plan towards the oil and gas fields in Marib, which the group has been unable to reach militarily since 2014.
The scheme is summed up in the group’s intention to pressure towards imposing the sharing of the revenues of the local gas produced from Safer and the resumption of oil export through Ras Issa port after the end of the United Nations plan on Safer, by threatening to target the Safer facilities, as happened with the oil export ports, while not excluding that the group would try to resume Its military offensive towards Marib in the coming months.
