UPDATE Strike action stops Yemen oil exports
Reuters
Tue Feb 14, 2012
By Mohammed Ghobari and Nour Merza

SANAA/DUBAI Feb 14 (Reuters) - Oil production and exports from Yemen's Masila oilfield, the country's largest, have stopped after workers from state-owned PetroMasila went on strike over pay last Thursday, oil ministry officials told Reuters on Tuesday.

The strike at the Masila oilfield brings Yemen's total oil output of around 260,000 barrels a day to a near halt as its other major oil pipeline carrying light, sweet Maarib crude has been shut since November after consecutive blasts.

"There is no export or production in Masila," a senior oil ministry official said, adding that exports from the Ash Shihr terminal had also stopped.

The bulk of crude exported out of the Ash Shihr terminal on the east of the country is shipped to customers in China and India.

Impoverished Yemen has been brought to its knees by a year of political upheaval with months of protests against the outgoing President Abdullah Ali Saleh. Violence has escalated in the run-up to the presidential elections set for Monday.

The government has lost control of whole chunks of the country, giving southern separatists, northern Shi'ite rebels and Islamist militants a window to further their goals.

Although a small oil producer, Yemen's location on the strategically important Bab al-Mandab strait, through which millions of barrels of oil are shipped between Asia, Europe and the Americas, makes instability there a risk to global trade.