LONDON (Reuters) – Air strikes by Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen have sparked a modest rise in oil prices of $3 per barrel, even though Yemen plays a marginal role in the global oil market. Yemen produces just 130,000 barrels per day, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), about 0.1 percent of global production and the same as Italy or Kansas. The country shares a long border with southwest Saudi Arabia but violence in that area poses no threat to the main Saudi oilfields, which are concentrated in the northeast of the kingdom. More significantly, Yemen forms one coastline of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, which connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea. On average almost 4 million barrels of oil pass through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait every day en route from the main Gulf oilfields to refineries in the […]