Newly Discovered Oilfield Is Iran’s Second Biggest

IRAN NEWS ECONOMIC DESK

TEHRAN – A new oilfield discovered in southwestern Iran is the second largest found in the country, Iran’s oil minister Bijan Zanganeh said on Monday.

The Namavaran oilfield has an estimated 53 billion barrels of reserves, Zanganeh said.

Exploration started at the site in 2016, with 31 billion barrels previously discovered and an additional 22 billion barrels added to previous estimates, Zanganeh said, according to SHANA.

Approximately 2.2 billion barrels of oil have been added to the country’s production capacity if there is a 10 percent recovery rate at the oilfield, Zanganeh said.

There is a possibility that the field will be expanded in a southwest and southeast direction, Zanganeh said.

Meanwhile in the ceremony the Atlas of Iran’s oil and gas fields which were explored after the 1979 Islamic Revolution was unveiled by the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC)’s exploration department.

The ceremony was held in Tehran to disclose details about a newly discovered oil reservoir in the southwestern province of Khuzestan.

During the ceremony, Seyed Saleh Hendi, director of the NIOC exploration department, said his company had made a new discovery every year since the revolution, with the exception of six years which were contemporary with the Iran-Iraq war.

He said the atlas entailed all the oil and gas discoveries in Iran over the past four decades.

During this period, a total of 73 fields including 36 oil and 37 gas fields have been discovered in Iran, Hendi said. The fields also include 26 border and joint fields.

According to the official, all the oil recovered in the country over the past four decades has been replaced by new explorations, and conditions in the gas field are far better as gas reserves are eight times the amount of gas recovered during this period.

Iran ranks as the world’s fourth–largest reserve holder of oil, and the second-largest holder of gas reserves, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Iran had an estimated 157 billion barrels of proved crude oil reserves in January 2018, the EIA website said.

Since withdrawing from Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, the United States has reimposed sanctions to strangle its vital oil trade.