An oil pipeline in southern Yemen that belongs to the Korea National Oil Corporation (KNOC) exploded on Tuesday in what authorities there are suspecting was a bomb attack.

A government official in Seoul said that an oil pipeline of the Korean oil corporation that serves the Block 4 oil exploration region in the governorate of Shabwa exploded around 8 a.m. local time on Tuesday.

The official said that there were no injured parties and that the damage from the explosion was estimated to be minimal as the explosion struck a part of the 204-kilometer pipeline in which oil almost never passes through.

Yemeni authorities suspect al-Qaida militants were responsible for the explosion. AFP earlier reported that al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the incident.

However, Seoul says that it is also investigating the possibility that locals who were excluded from the Korean corporation’s construction work on the pipeline blew it up out of spite.
The oil company said Wednesday that the damage from the explosion was not serious, citing that the amount of oil that moved through the pipeline used to be large in the past but now only stands at 150 barrels of oil per day.

The company, which is conducting restoration efforts on the damaged section of the pipeline, said that for now it is hard to speculate who was behind the incident.

KNOC acquired a 50-percent stake in the Yemen Company for Investment in Oil and Minerals in 2007 and has been developing oil fields at four sites in Yemen since the same year.