Yemen LNG (also called YLNG) is the first natural gas liquefaction (LNG) project in

Yemen Yemen (; ar, ٱلْيَمَن, al-Yaman), officially the Republic of Yemen,, ) is a country in Western Asia. It is situated on the southern end of the Arabian Peninsula, and borders Saudi Arabia to the north and Oman to the northeast and ...

. The LNG plant is located in

Balhaf Balhaf is an industrial port town and an oasis in an area of coastal dunes in the Burum Coastal Area of Yemen. It has palm trees and white sand, which gives way to fields of black lava and to the fishing port of Bir-Ali. Qana, a major point of depa ...

History

Yemen LNG Company was incorporated in 1995 to develop the LNG plant. In 1997, the development was halted because of the

Asian economic crisis The Asian financial crisis was a period of financial crisis that gripped much of East Asia and Southeast Asia beginning in July 1997 and raised fears of a worldwide economic meltdown due to financial contagion. However, the recovery in 1998–1 ...

. The project was launched only in August 2005 after signing three LNG supply contracts. On 29 October 2007, Yemen LNG and Yemen state-owned oil and gas company Safer Exploration and Production agreed a 20-year contract, according to which Safer grants the LNG plant with supply up to 12.5 billion cubic meter (bcm) of gas per year from the Block 18 of the Marib- Jawf field. The production started on 15 October 2009.

Technical description

The project comprises upstream gas processing facilities including a transfer line linking processing units, a spur-line for transporting gas to the Ma'bar area and a , pipeline connecting the gas processing facilities to the LNG plant. The plant consists of two

LNG train Liquefied natural gas (LNG) is natural gas (predominantly methane, CH4, with some mixture of ethane, C2H6) that has been cooled down to liquid form for ease and safety of non-pressurized storage or transport. It takes up about 1/600th the volu ...

s with the total capacity of 6.7 million tonnes per year. The contractors for the construction of LNG trains were Technip, JGC, and

Kellogg Brown & Root KBR, Inc. (formerly Kellogg Brown & Root) is a U.S. based company operating in fields of science, technology and engineering. KBR works in various markets including aerospace, defense, industrial and intelligence. After Halliburton acquired Dres ...

. The project is one of the country's first big

project financing Project finance is the long-term financing of infrastructure and industrial projects based upon the projected cash flows of the project rather than the balance sheets of its sponsors. Usually, a project financing structure involves a number of e ...

with total cost of US$4 billion, involving US$3 billion in debt being raised from a syndicate of banks.

Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ is the largest bank in Japan. It was established on January 1, 2006, following the merger of the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Ltd. and UFJ Bank Ltd. MUFG is one of the three so-called Japanese "megabanks" (along with SMBC and Mizuho). As such, ...

BNP Paribas BNP Paribas is a French international banking group, founded in 2000 from the merger between Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP, "National Bank of Paris") and Paribas, formerly known as the Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas. The full name of the grou ...

Citigroup Citigroup Inc. or Citi ( stylized as citi) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services corporation headquartered in New York City. The company was formed by the merger of banking giant Citicorp and financial conglomera ...

ING Group The ING Group ( nl, ING Groep) is a Dutch multinational banking and financial services corporation headquartered in Amsterdam. Its primary businesses are retail banking, direct banking, commercial banking, investment banking, wholesale banki ...

Royal Bank of Scotland The Royal Bank of Scotland plc (RBS; gd, Banca Rìoghail na h-Alba) is a major retail and commercial bank in Scotland. It is one of the retail banking subsidiaries of NatWest Group, together with NatWest (in England and Wales) and Ulster B ...

Société Générale Société Générale S.A. (), colloquially known in English as SocGen (), is a French-based multinational financial services company founded in 1864, registered in downtown Paris and headquartered nearby in La Défense. Société Générale ...

, and

Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation is a Japanese multinational banking and financial services institution headquartered in Yurakucho, Chiyoda, Tokyo, Japan. The group operates in retail, corporate, and investment banking segment worldwide. It provides financial products and se ...

are the initial mandated lead arrangers and

bookrunner In investment banking, a bookrunner is usually the main underwriter or lead-manager/arranger/coordinator in equity, debt, or hybrid securities issuances. The bookrunner usually syndicates with other investment banks in order to lower its risk. The ...

s on a loan.

Project company

The consortium is led by

Total S.A. TotalEnergies SE is a French multinational integrated energy and petroleum company founded in 1924 and one of the seven supermajor oil companies. Its businesses cover the entire oil and gas chain, from crude oil and natural gas exploration and ...

(39.62%) in cooperation with

Hunt Oil Company Hunt Oil Co. is an independent oil and gas company headquartered in Dallas, Texas. It conducts its main oil production activities in the United States, Canada and, as of 1984, in Yemen. In the past, the company was owned by american oil tyc ...

(17.22%), Yemen Gas Company (YGC; 16.73%), SK Corp. (9.55%), Kogas (6.00%),

Hyundai Corporation Hyundai Corporation () is a South Korean company founded in 1976 as part of the Hyundai '' chaebol''. It is a general trading company providing export and import services with a wide variety of products including marine vessels, industrial plant ...

(5.88%), and the General Authority for Social Security & Pensions of Yemen (5.00%). On 30 June 2010, Russia's government announced that Russian gas company

Gazprom PJSC Gazprom ( rus, Газпром, , ɡɐzˈprom) is a Russian majority state-owned multinational energy corporation headquartered in the Lakhta Center in Saint Petersburg. As of 2019, with sales over $120 billion, it was ranked as the large ...

may buy Hunt Oil's stake, possibly together with

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the fifth-largest country in Asia, the second-largest in the Ara ...

LNG exports

Yemen LNG has SPAs ('Sale and Purchase Agreement') to supply: * Engie (formerly

Suez Suez ( ar, السويس '; ) is a seaport city (population of about 750,000 ) in north-eastern Egypt, located on the north coast of the Gulf of Suez (a branch of the Red Sea), near the southern terminus of the Suez Canal, having the same bou ...

) — 2.5 mtpa, *

— 2.0 mtpa, *

Kogas Korea Gas Corporation (KOGAS) is a South Korean public natural gas company that was established by the Korean government in 1983. KOGAS has grown into the largest LNG-importing company in the world and operates four LNG regasification terminal ...

— 2.0 mtpa. All SPAs last from 2009–2029. Early November 2017,

and Engie announced an agreement whereby

would buy all Engie's LNG production in the world; it is assumed that this agreement covers Engie's prior SPA with Yemen LNG. Due to the civil war raging in Yemen (

Yemeni Civil War (2015–present) Yemeni Civil War may refer to several historical events which have taken place in Yemen: * Alwaziri coup, February – March 1948 * Yemeni–Adenese clan violence, 1956–60 * North Yemen Civil War, 1962–70 * Aden Emergency, 1963–67 * North Yem ...

), the Yemen LNG partners stopped gas production, liquefaction and export in April 2015. Until today, April 2021, the production and exports had not yet resumed. The latest attack on a pipeline was in June 2019.

References

External links

{{Portal, Energy
Corporate website
Oil and gas companies of Yemen Liquefied natural gas plants Energy infrastructure in Yemen Natural gas in Yemen