Yemen to resume Maarib oil exports next week-oil min

SANAA, July 7 (Reuters) - Yemen will resume oil exports from its Maarib province by next week following violence which halted shipments for over a year and led to losses of up to $15 million a day, Yemen's oil minister said on Saturday.

Yemen's oil and gas pipelines have long been a target of attacks by militants in the unstable and impoverished country, but attacks on energy infrastructure have become more frequent since anti-government protests last year created a power vacuum.

The country's main Maarib oil pipeline, which carries crude to the Ras Isa export terminal on the Red Sea coast, was the target of three consecutive attacks in October last year alone.

"The technical teams that are being protected by the military will finish repairs of the pipeline this week," Hisham Sharaf told Reuters on Saturday. "We will begin to pump oil from the Maarib fields to the port of Ras Isa on the Red Sea by next week."

Attacks on the pipeline had also forced Yemen's 150,000 barrel per day (bpd) Aden refinery to close, leaving the country more dependent on imports and donations.

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. (Reporting by Mohammed Ghobari; Writing by Amena Bakr; Editing by David Holmes)