Yemen has resumed operations at the Aden Refinery for the first time in nine months.

The refinery received its first shipment of crude oil from the Red Sea terminal of Ras Isa. It is expected to treat up to 2.4 million barrels of crude in August, according to Najeeb Mansour, the Aden Refinery’s general manager, state-owned Saba news agency reports.

At about 80,000 barrels a day (b/d), this is still well below the normal 150,000 b/d capacity. 

The refinery was forced to close in November last year following successive attacks on the main crude oil pipeline from the central Marib province that supplies it with crude oil feedstock.

The 120,000-barrel-a-day (b/d) Marib pipeline, which carries oil from fields in Block 18 in the Marib province to the Ras Isa terminal on the Red Sea, was attacked in mid-October.

Some of the crude is shipped to Aden to be refined. Revenues from the exports are then used to buy heavier crudes, particularly from Iran, to be used as the main feedstock for the Aden refinery. The attacks on the have cost Yemen as much as $500m each month, according to Mansour.