Yemen: Second IOC Returns Despite No End In Sight To Conflict

17 May 2019 Issue: 62 / 20 By: Waylon Fairbanks

Indonesia’s Medco Energi is joining OMV as the second foreign firm to return to Yemen since war forced a mass exodus in 2015. But Total is nowhere closer to restarting its key Yemen LNG project as the conflict enters its fifth year.

This week was a particularly bad one for war-torn Yemen and its forlorn hopes of peace. Following a drone attack on two pumping stations in central Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, Houthi-owned media claimed responsibility citing Riyadh’s “continued aggression and blockade” in Yemen. The strikes only further escalated the already fever pitch tensions in the Gulf (MEES, 17 May).

The same day, the United Nations confirmed that Houthi forces had handed over the strategic port of Hodeidah (see map) along with two other Red Sea ports as part of an ambitious ceasefire aiming to wind down the conflict. Reopening besieged Hodeidah is crucial to ending the Saudi blockade and thus provide Yemen’s starving population with medical and food aid. (CONTINUED - 1298 WORDS)