By Carola Hoyos

WHEN ALI ABDULLAH SALEH, Yemen’s long-standing president, pushed the button to signal the departure of the country’s first tanker of liquefied natural gas for South Korea last weekend, he was sending it into already choppy seas.

Natural gas prices have collapsed with the economic downturn and a world ever more obsessed with being green, and more efficient power generation threatens to eat into future gas demand.

Beyond the global market for LNG, Yemen’s political stability is growing increasingly fragile. Al Qaeda terrorists and local tribes are threatening the safety of government officials and westerners, and along Yemen’s porous border with Saudi Arabia the government is facing a growing insurgency that has drawn in the Saudis. But what western officials and energy executives worry most about is the growing dissent in Yemen’s south. They warn that social unrest there, manifested by recent street demonstrations, could turn into a more focused political campaign for secession within the coming months.

That is a particular problem for the $4.5bn Yemen LNG project, which Mr Saleh inaugurated last weekend.

The field that provides its gas lies in Marib area of northern Yemen and is linked by a 320km pipeline to the Balhaf liquefaction plant and export terminal on the coast of Shabwah, in the south. Mr Saleh insists the LNG project, Yemen’s biggest industrial venture, will serve to unify the country. It is expected to generate between $30bn (£18bn, €20bn) and $50bn in income for the Yemeni government over the plant’s 25-year lifespan. “This will make the people of Yemen stronger and unified. It shows that the people are unified,” he told the Financial Times.

But executives at Total, the French energy group that is the technical leader on the project, and other foreign officials are acutely aware that the country’s unity hangs in delicate balance. Yves-Louis Darricarrère, Total’s head of exploration and production, said he had no doubt the LNG project would have received the green light even if Total had known in 2005 that gas prices would collapse.