YICOM was established in Yemen as the first company to work in the field of oil and gas exploration and production. Due to the economic importance of YICOM, and for the purpose of realizing its objectives it was given by the law of its establishment a number of privileges, Such as:
▪ The company has legal and juridical personality.
▪ Enjoys complete financial and administrative autonomy.
▪ Has the right to participate with capitals wholly owned by it or participate in companies.
▪Has the right to establish companies, with capitals wholly owned by it or participate in companies.It was entrusted to the company the responsibilities to explore and exploit block-5 and block-4,and due to the small capital of establishment that would not assist it to take the risk to carry out the exploration work directly, the company made all of it’s efforts to find investors to carry out the exploration and development work, as a result of those effort the company (representing the Ministry of Oil and Minerals) in turn was able to sign a production sharing agreement (PSA) in Block-5 on 13th of March,1990 to invest in Block-5 (Jannah) with a number of international oil companies (HUNT, EXXON, TOTAL, KUFPEC and GREECE RUSSIAN COMPANIES, NEWCO).
After the PSA signature the operator started the exploration work, which resulted in the discovery of Halewah, Dhahab, Al-Nasr, Aser, and Jannah fields. After the establishment of the Yemen General Oil and Gas Corporation in 1996, YICOM became one of it’s subsidiary companies.