49 Acts of Powerline Sabotage, 19 Acts of Oil Pipeline Sabotage in Last Six Months

Accord­ing to com­piled reports from the Yemen Times  over 60 acts of indus­tri­al sab­o­tage have tak­en place since Jan­u­ary with­in the trib­al area of the Marib gov­er­norate in Yemen, cut­ting pow­er to Sana’a, the nation’s cap­i­tal 170 miles to the east, and crip­pling the government’s oil and gas infra­struc­ture. Oil and gas rev­enue pro­vides 70 per­cent of the state’s bud­get.    

Media sources have not been able to explain the rea­son behind the attacks, but Yemeni sources all point to armed tribes­peo­ple in Marib. Attacks on Yemen’s oil and gas pipelines and elec­tric grid great­ly esca­lat­ed fol­low­ing the erup­tion of protests against for­mer pres­i­dent Ali Abdul­lah Saleh in 2011. Offi­cials in Yemen have argued that the tribes are loy­al­ists of the for­mer pres­i­dent while oth­er, unnamed sources, have pro­claimed the tribes to be sep­a­ratists from the con­cept of cen­tral gov­ern­ment all togeth­er, func­tion­ing in a pow­er vac­u­um.

Accord­ing to the Yemen Post, “Res­i­dents in the cap­i­tal Sana’a have had to endure long spells of dark­ness over the past cou­ple of weeks as pow­er lines were attacked with­in hours of their repair, leav­ing peo­ple no respite what so ever. While Yeme­nis are accus­tomed to black­outs, nev­er before did the cap­i­tal face so many and lengthy pow­er out­ages.”

In mid June, the Pub­lic Elec­tric­i­ty Cor­po­ra­tion in Yemen issued a state­ment request­ing more gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary sup­port to sup­press the attacks, warn­ing that the pow­er sta­tion could col­lapse com­plete­ly if attacks con­tin­ued.

Between Jan­u­ary 1 and June 24, there have been 18 attacks on Yemen’s main pipeline, which runs through Marib to the coast for export. Anoth­er attack struck the pipeline on June 27th.  Accord­ing to Yemeni offi­cials, armed mem­bers of tribes blocked the road lead­ing to the area of the pipeline that had been attacked, pre­vent­ing tech­ni­cal crews from mak­ing repairs. Yemeni troops were sent to reopen the road. Clash­es between gov­ern­ment forces and the tribes are expect­ed.

Back in Decem­ber of 2012, the Yemeni army launched an offen­sive against sus­pect­ed groups of sabo­teurs. Twen­ty peo­ple were killed but infra­struc­ture attacks only increased.

It remains unclear which tribes, or which groups with­in the region’s tribes, are car­ry­ing out the attacks. Ear­li­er in June, the largest tribes in Marib, the Al Hutaik and Al Jar­dan tribes signed, accord­ing to the Yemen Times, “a trib­al order declar­ing the legal­i­ty of exe­cut­ing those behind oil and gas pipeline attacks.” Sim­i­lar decrees were signed last year as well with­out results.

Yemen’s oil pro­duc­tion has declined from more than 400,000 bar­rels per day at the begin­ning of 2000 to the cur­rent 270,000 bar­rels per day when the pipeline actu­al­ly flows.