Google SANA - Yemen will announce in December the winners of a third bid tender to explore and produce oil in 14 blocks, the oil minister said.
'We will invite 34 companies that have been short-listed after the preliminary tender to submit their final bids for the exploration and joint exploitation of oil in these areas,' Khaled Mahfoudh Bahah said.
'The early indicators point to important potential, the real scale of which will be revealed when we announce on Dec 20 the winners,' he said on the sidelines of a mining conference in Saudi Arabia.
The announcement date of the bidding results has been delayed twice, once from July and once from November.
Yemen's oil ministry has said the following blocks are on offer: 11, 12, 17, 19, 23, 28, 29, 30, 57, 79, 80, 82, 83, and 84. Bahah said most of them were onshore blocks.
Yemen is pumping around 380,000 barrels per day of crude oil, down from around 470,000 bpd in 2002 due to declining output at mature fields.
The country has said it hopes high oil prices will encourage international energy companies to explore off its shores as it tries to reverse the decline in crude production.
Bahah said Yemen was committed to 'transparency, competitiveness and non-discrimination' in its bid