It is the project many said could never be built: a $4bn gas facility on the southern coast of the Arabian Peninsula, in one of the world’s poorest and most unsettled countries.

Yet this summer the developers of Yemen LNG expect to launch their first cargo of liquefied natural gas into the Gulf of Aden, on the first leg of a 9,000km voyage to South Korea. It will be the climax of a risky, and at times implausible venture that has been 14 years in the making.