Yemen To Export Jet Fuel As Refinery Output Resumes

Yemen’s Aden refinery is set to resume jet fuel exports for the first time in nearly a year as production at its refinery restarted this month, traders said on Monday.

The refinery has offered 30,000 tonnes of jet fuel for loading over August 23 to 25 in a tender that closes on August 14 and is valid until August 16.

The Aden refinery resumed production after halting operations for nine months because of attacks on the country’s main oil pipeline.

Two shipments of crude oil from Yemen’s Ras Isa oil terminal on the Red Sea coast arrived in Aden in late July, enabling the refinery to resume production. It will pump crude at a reduced rate of 60,000 barrels per day (bpd), a refinery official had said earlier.

Attacks on the pipeline by disgruntled tribesmen halted the flow of crude last year and forced the closure of the refinery, which has a capacity of 150,0000 bpd. This left the impoverished country dependent on fuel donations from Saudi Arabia and on imports.

But despite the restart of the refinery, traders say, Yemen will continue to rely on imports for its fuel needs as it will take a while for the refinery to operate at full capacity.

In a recent tender, the Aden refinery bought up to nine cargoes of gasoil from Vitol, Trafigura, Independent Petroleum Group and BB Energy at premiums ranging from $5.75 to $5.95 a barrel over Middle East quotes to be delivered over September to October, traders said.

Vitol will supply three to four cargoes, while IPG will supply two, Trafigura will supply one to two and BB Energy will supply one, one of them said.

Last month Yemen’s oil minister said the lengthy outage had cost the impoverished country up to $15 million a day in lost revenues.