5 fires in 8 years, and Aden refinery unionists accuse their “thieves”

Aden refineries: 5 fires within 8 years (Al Jazeera - Agencies)

Aden refineries: 5 fires within 8 years (Al Jazeera - Agencies)

In the city of Aden, the first oil refinery on this Arabian Peninsula was built. After 72 years of their construction, and years after the forces of the internationally recognized Yemeni government entered the city, these refineries were left vulnerable to sabotage and disruption, not for nothing, but rather due to the desire of a group of people whose commercial interests were mixed with their government influence, and their complex relationship with officials, aspiring to control the economy. In a country that has been witnessing war for years, the collapse of the local currency is accelerating, and inflation is rising.

In this investigation, which continued for months, we tracked Yemen's economic losses due to the cessation of work in the country's largest refineries in Aden, and we identified the party that benefited from that, since the start of the series of fires that affected the refineries successively.

Aden's refineries were burned more than 4 times during the war that has been ongoing since 2014. The first was during the battle that Aden witnessed after the Houthis attacked it in January 2015. The second fire affected one of the pipes in January 2016. Then it was followed in 2019 in The same month, a third fire occurred at the same refineries. On the morning of December 13, 2021, Aden Refineries announced a new fire that affected the administrative building, whose safes contain employee contracts and purchase and sale contracts, in one of the most important Yemeni economic facilities.

Aden Refineries established in 1952 (French)

In a post on Facebook, the refinery said that the fourth fire had reached the accounts building. This fire came at a time when Yemen was witnessing movements to confront the economic collapse, which was preceded by the change of the governor of the Central Bank, and President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi’s announcement of the formation of a committee to review the accounts of the Central Bank during the years 2016-2020, including the accounts for importing oil derivatives, for which the Aden refineries became responsible. Since the issuance of the decision to float oil derivatives several years ago. This was among a number of decisions taken by the president in an attempt to contain street anger due to the resounding collapse of the local currency (the riyal) against foreign currencies.

Timing

Although the refineries confirmed the existence of an electronic copy of this data, the timing of the fire’s occurrence raised a number of questions, the most important of which is: Why now? Who benefits? To answer this, we launched an investigation to try to answer it through open sources and documents.

At the same time that we began to search for the reasons for the shutdown of the refineries, the fifth fire broke out about a month after Prime Minister Maeen Abdul Malik’s directives to quickly implement the chronic plan prepared for the full operation of the Aden refineries to carry out their vital role in securing the local market’s needs for oil derivatives and providing the country’s currency needs. The difficult one.

Source: Al Jazeera