Reviewed August 2026 against the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS Fact Sheet 2025-3047), the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA Yemen Country Analysis Brief), and Worldometer/CEIC production trackers.

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Quick Answer: Does Yemen Have Oil?

Yes. Yemen has both discovered oil reserves and produces crude oil today, though at a fraction of its historical peak. As of 2025, Yemen produced approximately 15,202 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil, according to Worldometer’s oil tracker. A separate estimate from CEIC Data puts 2024 output at 15,223 bpd. Beyond current production, the U.S. Geological Survey’s September 2025 assessment (Fact Sheet 2025-3047) estimates Yemen holds a mean of 261 million barrels of undiscovered, technically recoverable conventional oil — resources not yet extracted but geologically identified as likely present.

So “does Yemen have oil reserves” and “does Yemen have oil” have two related but distinct answers: yes to current production, and yes to a meaningful undiscovered resource base that has not been fully tapped. The gap between those two numbers — and why it exists — is the real story of Yemen’s energy sector, and it’s covered section by section below.

Reserves vs. Undiscovered Resources: What the Numbers Actually Mean

Two figures get conflated constantly in searches for “yemen oil reserves,” and they measure different things:

• Proven reserves refer to oil that has already been discovered, appraised, and is considered commercially recoverable under current technology and prices. These figures come from field-by-field appraisal data, typically compiled by national ministries and cross-checked by bodies like the EIA.
• Undiscovered, technically recoverable resources are a statistical estimate — based on geological analogs and basin modeling — of oil that has not yet been found but is likely to exist given the rock formations present. The USGS’s September 2025 assessment falls into this category: a mean estimate of 261 million barrels of undiscovered conventional oil, plus 4.5 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered natural gas.
• Try it: Run your own numbers

This distinction matters because it explains why you’ll see wildly different “reserve” numbers depending on the source and the year an older figure was compiled. The USGS Fact Sheet 2025-3047 is the most recent authoritative assessment of Yemen’s undiscovered hydrocarbon potential, published in September 2025 based on 2024 geological modeling. It does not replace field-level proven reserve figures — it estimates what has not yet been found, using probabilistic methods applied to Yemen’s sedimentary basins.

Read the full USGS Fact Sheet 2025-3047 if you want the basin-by-basin breakdown behind these numbers.

How Much Oil Does Yemen Produce Today?

Worldometer’s oil production tracker lists Yemen’s 2025 crude output at 15,202 bpd. CEIC Data, drawing on a slightly different methodology and reference year, lists 2024 production of oil and petroleum liquids combined at 15,223 bpd — the two figures are close enough to confirm the order of magnitude even though they come from separate datasets and years.

For context on demand: the EIA’s Yemen Country Analysis Brief puts national petroleum consumption at 100,734 bpd in 2024 — meaning Yemen currently consumes roughly 6.6 times more petroleum than it produces domestically, a gap covered through imports and stockpiled reserves rather than by taking a lower per-capita share.

That said, other estimates paint a higher production picture. Al Jazeera, citing S&P Global Energy Insight analysis published in July 2026, reports an estimated domestic production figure of 50,000 bpd for 2023-2024 when accounting for output not captured in export-tracking datasets. The spread between 15,000 bpd (Worldometer/CEIC) and 50,000 bpd (S&P Global via Al Jazeera) reflects a real measurement problem in Yemen: production data depends heavily on which fields are operating, which routes are counted, and whether a given tracker captures output that never reaches export terminals. Neither figure is wrong so much as they’re measuring different scopes — treat any single number as a snapshot, not a settled fact, and check the sourcing before citing one over the other.

Where Yemen’s Oil Sits: Masila, Marib, and Shabwa

Yemen’s producing and prospective hydrocarbon basins are concentrated in three named areas, per the EIA’s Yemen Country Analysis Brief and the Ministry of Oil and Minerals:

• Masila Basin — historically the largest contributor to Yemen’s crude output, located in the eastern Hadramawt governorate.
• Marib Basin — home to Yemen’s principal onshore oil and gas fields and the country’s main refinery infrastructure.
• Shabwa Basin — a producing region for both crude oil and associated natural gas, and one of the areas where field control has shifted repeatedly amid the conflict.

These three basins are named explicitly in the EIA brief as Yemen’s primary oil and natural gas producing regions. Field-level output within each basin is not broken out publicly at a granular level in the sources reviewed for this piece — if you need current per-field figures, the Yemen Ministry of Oil and Minerals is the primary official source, though data availability depends on which authority controls a given field at the time of your query.

Yemen’s Natural Gas Reserves

Yemen’s proven natural gas reserves are estimated at 14 to 17 trillion cubic feet (TCF), per EIA and Worldometer data. On top of that proven base, the USGS’s September 2025 assessment adds a mean estimate of 4.5 trillion cubic feet of undiscovered, technically recoverable natural gas — gas not yet confirmed by drilling but modeled as likely present based on the same basin analysis used for the oil estimate.

Combined, that puts Yemen’s total gas picture — proven plus undiscovered mean estimate — in a range of roughly 18.5 to 21.5 TCF, though these two figures come from different methodologies (proven reserves vs. probabilistic undiscovered resources) and shouldn’t be added as if they were measuring the same thing with the same confidence level.

On LNG export capacity and current export volumes specifically: this is not clearly published in the sources reviewed for this article. If you need current export figures, check the EIA’s international data platform directly, since country briefs there are updated quarterly and would reflect any change in Yemen’s export infrastructure status faster than a static reserve estimate would.

Why Oil Matters to Yemen’s Economy

Hydrocarbons are not a peripheral part of Yemen’s economy — they’re structurally central to how the government funds itself. Per the EIA’s Yemen Country Analysis Brief:

• Hydrocarbons account for approximately 80% of Yemen’s government revenues.
• Hydrocarbons contribute an estimated 25-30% of Yemen’s GDP.

That combination — a government funded overwhelmingly by oil and gas, in a country producing well below its historical capacity — is the core tension in Yemen’s fiscal picture. Every barrel-per-day swing in production has an outsized effect on state revenue relative to countries with more diversified economies.

Yemen vs. Its Historical Peak and Regional Context

The single most useful number for understanding “yemen oil” searches is the comparison between where production stood at its peak and where it stands today. Here is the full picture assembled from the EIA, Worldometer, and USGS in one table:

Figures compiled from EIA, Worldometer, CEIC Data, USGS, and Al Jazeera (S&P Global) as cited above. Production and reserve figures are subject to revision as new field data becomes available — see “How to Check the Current Numbers Yourself” below.

Why Production Fell From 439,000 bpd to Today’s Levels

The gap between 439,000 bpd at peak and roughly 15,000-50,000 bpd today (depending on which dataset you use) did not happen because Yemen ran out of oil. The EIA attributes the decline to a combination of factors that compound rather than operate independently:

• Facility damage and disruption: Key infrastructure, including the Marib refinery and connecting pipelines, has suffered direct damage and repeated shutdowns.
• Fluctuating field control: Different basins, notably in the Marib and Shabwa areas, have changed hands among competing factions, which disrupts continuity of operations even where physical infrastructure is intact.
• Investment withdrawal: International operators have scaled back or paused activity given the security and political risk profile, which limits both maintenance of existing wells and any new field development.
• Export bottlenecks: Port access and export routing have been intermittently blocked or contested, which constrains how much of whatever is produced can actually reach international buyers.

None of these are permanent geological constraints — they’re operational and political ones, which is exactly why forecasts for Yemen’s sector hinge on governance and security conditions rather than on resource depletion.

Satellite-Based Exploration for Hard-to-Access Basins

One practical implication of Yemen’s security situation is that conventional ground-based exploration — seismic crews, drilling scouts, geological survey teams — is difficult or unsafe to deploy across much of the country’s prospective acreage. This is where remote-sensing methods have a specific, non-theoretical advantage: they don’t require a crew on the ground to identify structural targets.

Farmonaut’s satellite-based mineral detection platform applies this approach to mineral and geological pattern recognition from orbit, which is directly relevant to basins like Shabwa where field control is contested. The same principle extends to broader resource mapping: our satellite-driven 3D mineral prospectivity mapping report shows how structural and mineralized-zone targeting works in practice, which is useful reference material regardless of whether you’re evaluating oil, gas, or mineral prospects in a similarly access-constrained region.

If you’re evaluating a specific region for exploration or investment due diligence, you can get a quote from Farmonaut to scope a satellite-based assessment.

Calculator: Estimate Yemen’s Hydrocarbon Revenue Exposure

Because roughly 80% of Yemen’s government revenue and 25-30% of its GDP trace back to hydrocarbons (per the EIA), a change in production or price has an outsized fiscal effect. Use the calculator below to see how a given production level and oil price translates into estimated daily revenue and its rough share of government income, using your own assumptions for price and revenue share.

Assumptions: this tool estimates gross oil value and a simplified government-take share; it excludes gas revenue, refining margins, transport costs, subsidies, and the undiscovered-resource base (261 million barrels per USGS) that is not yet in production. Default values reflect the 2025 Worldometer production figure and the EIA’s 80% hydrocarbon revenue-share figure — adjust every field to model your own scenario.

How to Check the Current Numbers Yourself

Every figure in this article carries a vintage, and every one of them will move. Here’s where to verify or refresh each:

• Production levels: Worldometer’s oil tracker updates annually in late Q1 following IEA and OPEC year-end reporting cycles. The EIA also refreshes its international database quarterly.
• Proven reserves: The USGS publishes global oil and gas assessments periodically — the current Yemen figures come from the September 2025 fact sheet. BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy updates annually each June and is another cross-check point.
• Natural gas figures: The IEA tracks gas data through its annual World Energy Balances publication; Worldometer maintains a running tracker for proven reserves that updates as new assessments are released.
• Sector-wide changes (export infrastructure, investment activity): These move faster than annual reserve assessments and are best checked directly against the EIA’s Yemen country brief or Ministry of Oil and Minerals announcements, since neither this article nor any snapshot source can track real-time operational status in a contested-control environment.

On two points specifically, current public data has gaps: a detailed sector breakdown of the 100,734 bpd consumption figure (power generation vs. industrial vs. transport) isn’t published in the sources reviewed here, and current capital expenditure by international operators in Yemen’s fields isn’t tracked in a single public source. If you need either figure, the EIA’s full country brief PDF and direct outreach to operators active in the Masila and Marib basins are the two most direct paths.

FAQs

Summary

Yemen has oil: roughly 15,200 bpd of current production per Worldometer and CEIC Data, an estimated 261 million barrels of undiscovered conventional resources per the USGS’s September 2025 assessment, and proven natural gas reserves of 14-17 TCF. What Yemen doesn’t have, right now, is the production level it once had — 439,000 bpd at its 2000-2001 peak, per the EIA — because of infrastructure damage, contested field control, and reduced investment, not because the resource has run out. Hydrocarbons still fund roughly 80% of government revenue and 25-30% of GDP, which means every shift in production or field control carries outsized fiscal weight. Check the sources linked throughout — USGS Fact Sheet 2025-3047 and the EIA Yemen Country Analysis Brief chief among them — for updated figures as they’re published.