UAE to donate 3mn barrels oil to Yemen: minister

SANAA: The United Arab Emirates has pledged 3 million barrels of oil to Yemen, which faces a fuel crisis due to attacks on a pipeline during widespread political unrest, a Yemeni deputy minister said on Saturday.

Deputy Information Minister Abdo al-Janadi, speaking to reporters, did not give details about the delivery of the oil from the UAE, the world's third-largest crude exporter.

Saudi Arabia last month donated 3 million barrels of crude to Yemen, its impoverished neighbour, and several deliveries have already been made to a refinery in the southern port city of Aden to help ease fuel shortages.

A blast on the small, non-OPEC producer's main pipeline in March, for which angry tribesmen were suspected, has stopped the flow of crude to the refinery.

The Yemeni embassy in Washington said on Friday that Yemen had repaired its main oil pipeline in the Maarib province and that oil had begun to flow.

Yemen is in the midst of a political crisis after about five months of demonstrations against the three-decade rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who is in Saudi Arabia for medical treatment following a June assassination attempt.

A shipping source familiar with the repair schedule said on Thursday he had been told it would take about a month to fix the pipeline Yemen relies upon to carry crude oil from the Maarib fields to Aden where it is exported.

Copyright Reuters, 2011