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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:
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The total number of Concession blocks are 105.
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There are 13 producing blocks operated by 11 oil companies.
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26
blocks are at the exploratory phases operated by 14 oil
companies.
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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. |
