Yemen LNG Approach to Cultural Heritage Preservation, Preserving the Past while Building the Future

Abstract

This paper describes Yemen LNG approach to the preservation of cultural heritage during constructing of its project, which comprises a LNG plant and a 320km pipeline, both of which are located in one of the richest archaeological areas in a Country with a rare and deep cultural history, thus presenting a great challenge to control the impact of the project activities on cultural heritage. The Yemen LNG project and its locus are described in the paper noting that the Yemen LNG project is the largest industrial investment project ever implemented in Yemen. This paper also gives a short background describing the archaeological landscape of Yemen in general and the archaeological landscape of the project area. The paper then discusses the innovative cultural heritage preservation strategy and management plans which Yemen LNG has adopted to mitigate impacts to cultural heritage. The strategy is based on three principles: knowing archaeology, preserving it and monitoring cultural heritage during construction. Knowledge of cultural heritage is the starting point and the archaeological baseline surveys and studies highlight the sites in the plant and along the pipeline route. These surveys were followed by a comprehensive archaeological documentation covering all the archaeological sites in the project areas. Second is elimination or mitigation of potential impact on cultural heritage, a good example of this effort is that the pipeline was rerouted at several points to avoid damage to archaeological sites, equally, at the plant site at Balhaf, the plant layout was re-designed to preserve key sites (including a historic Cemetery) located inside the plant. To ensure that impacts are mitigated to ALARP, the third level of action is to ensure avoidance of direct or indirect damage to the archaeological sites, by conducting daily monitoring, additionally a team of archaeologists worked ahead of construction to monitor sensitive sites and to ensure that appropriate protection measures were taken before construction began. The paper shares lessons learned from 4 years of managing sensitive archaeological sites and it proposes learning points for future large energy projects which face challenges in sensitive cultural heritage environments. This subject is vitally important in a context where the expectations of stakeholders are that energy Companies should be sensitive to cultural heritage and should respect important archaeological sites.