The discovery of commercial amounts of oil in the eastern and mid areas of Yemen, the number of international oil companies working in oil exploration and production increased rapidly. Yemen has very large concession areas distributed between its middle and eastern parts. In addition, offshore areas are of a big volume located in Aden Gulf, the Red Sea and Suqatra Island.
On close scrutiny of the Yemeni Concession map, it is possible to infer the following:
- The total number of Concession blocks are 105.
- There are 13 producing blocks operated by 11 oil companies.
- 26 blocks are at the exploratory phases operated by 14 oil companies.
- There are 66 open blocks.
In fact, oil is the main source of energy in the Republic of Yemen. Because of its fundamental significance, the Yemeni government considers oil as the basic element for building its national economy. Oil is used in financing the construction of socio-economic and development projects which constitute the infrastructure of the national economy. It is also the source of extracting useful derivatives and products exploited in different basic industries.
More over, the oil reserves of the Republic of Yemen estimate at 9,718 billion barrels. It is worth noting that fresh information on sedimentary basins in Yemen indicates that there are many promising concession areas located at 12 sedimentary basins. At the time being, Yemeni oil production is only from 2 sedimentary basins out of the above-mentioned 12. Producing oil only from two basins gives us more inspiring and optimistic indicators. Other indicators are the 87 blocks, out of which only 12 produce oil. Yet, the size of a block differs from one to another. The average size of a block is 4 thousand square kilometers unlike Safer block whose area is 8 thousand square kilometer.
In addition, there is an orientation towards exploiting offshore blocks located at the Arab Sea, Aden Gulf, and the Red Sea. Historically speaking, an oil company carried out drilling operations between Al-Mukalla and Sayhout. The result was the discovery of 3 thousand barrels in one of the wells. That was a very simple indicator, so now there is an Kuwaiti oil company working on block 15.