Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 6
By Dalga Khatinoglu – Trend:
Iran says it is getting ready to complete a pipeline and a terminal to export a "new grade" of crude by year-end.
Seyed Mohsen Ghamsari, director for international affairs at the National Iranian Oil Company, told Reuters that the terminal near Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf would be ready to export initially 300,000 barrels per day (b/d) of the new grade of crude.
The report didn’t mention which fields would produce the new grade oil, but SHANA covered the Reuters’ report in Persian and added that the new type of oil belongs to West Karoun block.
This block includes five fields – all of them are joint fields with Iraq’s Basra region.
Reuters, itself also mentioned that "the crude blend will be of similar quality to Iraq's Basra Heavy crude, with an API gravity of between 22 and 26 degrees and a sulphur content higher than 2 percent.”
West Karoun includes North and South Azadegan, Yadavaran and North and South Yaran fields with 64 billion barrels of in-situ reserves, which currently share about 6 percent of the country’s total crude oil production (225,000 b/d).
The volume is expected to increase by 90,000 b/d by March 2017.
One of the major fields in the mentioned block is Azadegan, divided into two sectors – North and South. The South sector produces 50,000 b/d currently and has been projected to flow 320,000 b/d from the first phase by 2018 and further 280,000 b/d from the second phase in 2020s.
The formation of South Azadegan consists of four layers, which contain oil types with API gravity of 20, 30, 32 and 35 (from mid-to-late cretaceous).
The North sector produces 73,000 b/d.
New type of oil?
Iran increased the capacity of the pipelines transiting the oil from West Karoun to Kharg terminal to 220,000 b/d last month and plans to increase the transit capacity to 300,000 b/d by 2017 and 700,000 b/d by late 2018.
The only “green field” that would start early production in this block is Yaran, which is projected to produce 30,000 b/d by the end of September 2016.
Yadavaran and Azadegan are “brown fields”.
Therefore, in the coming months, Iran will not increase the production level at West Karoun by 315,000 b/d – it will increase the output to this level.
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Dalga Khatinoglu is the head of Trend Agency’s Iran news service, follow him on Twitter: @dalgakhatinoglu