Last week France announced that it had signed a strategic agreement with the United Arab Emirates to cooperate in the energy sector. Whilst this could well aid the European country during winter, with energy shortages in Europe leading to higher prices, blackouts, and potential loss of heat, Yemen may end up becoming the newest victim of the crisis in Europe.
At the same time as French President, Emmanuel Macron, was hosting President of the UAE, Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, in Paris, the economy ministry of France announced a new strategic energy agreement with Abu Dhabi. Although the precise details of the deal have not been announced, it is being speculated that Paris is attempting to pre-empt what they see as a Russian plan to cut off their natural resources from Europe completely. Thus, the deal is being hailed to have the possibility to help ease the current crisis and will more than likely be a multi-billion dollar cooperation agreement.
The problem here is that, until this point, since the beginning of the crisis in Ukraine and the subsequent effects of NATO member-states sanctions against Russia, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member nations have refused to budge significantly on their output of oil and natural gas. Despite US President, Joe Biden’s, visit to Riyadh in July and his attendance of the Arab Summit, Washington was unable to convince Saudi Arabia or any others in attendance to raise their exports significantly. In fact, there was little that Biden gained at all out of his Middle East visit, other than a slight mending of ties with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. As usual, however, the West’s intervention in Middle East affairs is clearly far from over, with Biden making it clear he “will not walk away“.
The UAE is now creating a breakthrough, after holding off for over half a year on the issue of aiding Europe in its time of need. The reason why most Gulf Arab regimes took this stance is due to a number of very important reasons; firstly, because of their relationships with Moscow, China and elsewhere outside the west; they also seek to diversify their economies going forward, seen most prominently in the cases of the UAE and Saudi Arabia; there is also the issue of strategically holding onto their reserves, as it makes fiscal sense for the Gulf regimes to hang onto their own reserves during an energy crisis.
So the question now is; why would things have changed? To begin with, we have to consider that we don’t currently know the specifics within the deal signed, so the analysis here could be more or less relevant to the actual deal. However, assuming that the new energy deal is going to be somewhat significant, will the UAE be digging into its strategic reserves in order to supply Europe? It is highly unlikely. What is more probable is that they will seek to exploit the resources of neighboring Yemen, in order to supplement any supply they may provide to France.
A shaky ceasefire in Yemen is currently in place and whilst the situation is far from stable, there has been a break in the brutal warfare witnessed last year. The primary battleground of the conflict in Yemen in 2021 was based in the oil rich Marib region of Yemen. The Ansarallah forces, which run their government out of the nation’s Capital, Sanaa, and have been at war with the Saudi-led coalition since 2015, sought to capture Marib, the last northern stronghold of the Saudi-backed forces in Yemen. The importance of this to all those living under the control of Ansarallah is vital. Yemen is in fact an extremely wealthy country, in terms of its natural resources, and according to some sources, a secret deal, between Saudi Arabia and the US Government, has been in place to keep Yemen’s oil resources away from its people for the past 30 years. Last year, reports indicated that Saudi Arabia had prepared to loot 950,000 barrels of crude oil from Yemen, whilst having only released 4% of the supplies required by the people of Yemen, at a time of blockade, war, epidemic, and famine.
The Ansarallah government in Yemen has repeatedly accused Saudi Arabia and its allies of a systematic campaign, through which they loot the resources of Yemen. In June, a tanker operated by the UAE, took off from Radhum port, in Yemen’s southern province of Shabwa, having stolen 400,000 barrels of oil from the resource rich region. Millions of barrels of oil, are pumped from Yemen every year and the extraction is still ongoing today. Instead of that wealth going to its rightful owners, under international law, the money is being deposited in the banks of Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
If you now pair the fact that the UAE seems to be warming up to the idea of helping out France in its time of need, with the fact that France signed off on its biggest sale of weapons to Abu Dhabi, last December, things aren’t exactly looking positive. The weapons deal was worth 19.2 billion US dollars and the weapons were far from defensive. The US Biden administration, which said, in February of 2021, that it would not sell “offensive weapons” to Saudi Arabia, proceeded to unfreeze previous weapons contracts and signed new ones, in late 2021. Biden has also reportedly been weighing the prospect of selling offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia, which could be interpreted as an incentive for Saudi Arabia to play ball on the oil market.
So far there has been no significant breakthroughs on ending the conflict in Yemen, despite the countless promises from the US Biden administration to find a solution. With no tangible reason for hope in ending the war at this time, will we see Abu Dhabi and Riyadh steal from the people of Yemen even more in order to supply Europe? If the answer is yes, then it is very likely that the only way forward for Ansarallah is to push forward and seize Marib in its entirety and attack in the heart of the UAE and Saudi Arabia, which will mean the reprisals from the two regimes, with their Western weapons, will cause even greater human suffering in Yemen.
Good article