Yemen’s Oil and Mineral Ministry has denounced the looting of the country’s oil resources by Saudi Arabia, saying the move is a blatant violation of international law.

The ministry said in a statement on Saturday that Saudi Arabia transports Yemeni oil to the Arabian Sea through a pipeline which extends from the Rub' al Khali desert to Hadhramaut and al-Mahrah provinces south of the country.

It said that Riyadh’s move to plunder Yemen’s wealth is done with the complicity of the country’s former Saudi-allied government.

Stating that Saudi Arabia's recent move has sparked protests by residents of al-Mahrah and other provinces, the statement called on the United Nations and the UN Security Council to counter Saudi aggression, occupation and looting of Yemeni resources through legal mechanisms.

Experts say the pipeline would allow the kingdom not to be constrained to the Strait of Hormuz or the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, both strategic choke points that affect its current oil shipping routes.

Saudi Arabia and its allies launched military campaign on Yemen in March 2015 with the aim of reinstalling the government of former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Yemen has no effective government for now, and the state affairs are now being run by Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement, which is also defending the country against the Saudi war.

A Yemeni boy walks through the rubble and debris of a destroyed petrol station that was hit by a Saudi airstrike in the capital Sana’a on May 27, 2018. (By AFP)

Yemen’s southern areas are controlled by Saudi-backed officials of the former Yemeni government.

Saudi Arabia invaded the Arab world’s poorest nation to bring back the Hadi regime to power. The kingdom has also imposed an all-out blockade on Yemen, which according to the UN is now the scene of the world’s worst man-made crisis.

Some 15,000 Yemenis have reportedly been killed and thousands more injured since the onset of the Saudi-led aggression in March 2015.

The war has unleashed a humanitarian and economic crisis on the already impoverished country. The UN has described the situation as “one of the worst humanitarian disasters of modern times.”