Baku, Azerbaijan, May 4
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Iran plans to increase its strategic oil reserves by five million barrels, Abdolreza Haji Hosseinnejad, the managing director of the country's Petroleum Engineering Development Company (PEDEC) said.
The plan will be realized by March 20, 2016 via constructing new oil storage facilities, Haji Hosseinnejad added.
Ten concrete crude oil tanks in Omidiyeh and Gurreh oil fields are under construction, he said, the official IRIB news agency reported May 4.
The crude oil storage facilities in Gurreh in southern Bushehr province has a capacity to store four million barrels of crude, meanwhile the facility which is under construction in Omidiyeh in southwestern Khuzestan province will store one million barrels of cured oil, Haji Hosseinnejad stated.
Iran began in 2006 with plans to create a global strategic petroleum reserve with the construction of 15 crude oil storage tanks with a planned capacity of 10 million barrels. The storage capacity of oil products in the country was around 11.5 billion liters in 2011.
The figure should reach 16.7 billion liters by the end of the Fifth Five Year Development Plan (2010-2015).
As of 2012, Iran is also capable of storing crude oil in the Gulf for a period of 10-12 days.
Reuters reported last March that Tehran is storing at least 30 million barrels of oil on its fleet of supertankers as Western sanctions continue to keep a lid on sales, however the Islamic Republic rejected the report.
Iran has parked unsold crude oil stocks off its coast, mainly onboard tankers belonging to its national carrier NITC, according to the report.
Iran's crude oil export was above 2.2 million barrels per day (mb/d) in 2011, but the western sanctions imposed in mid-2012 have pushed Iranian oil export volume to around one mb/d in 2013.
After achieving an interim nuclear agreement in November 2013, Iran's oil export increased steadily to around 1.11 mb/d, however, the volume reportedly decreased slightly during recent months again.
Edited by CN
Follow the author on Twitter: @UmidNiayesh