Tehran, Iran, July 23
By Milad Fashtami, Dalga Khatinoglu - Trend:
Iran has not had a new oil field enter into production since 2007, while the country's oil production capacity has been decreasing, reported EIA.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) released an annual report about Iran's energy sector on July 22, saying despite the country's abundant reserves, Iran's oil production has substantially declined over the past few years and international sanctions have profoundly affected Iran's energy sector, prompting a number of cancellations or delays of upstream projects, resulting in declining oil production capacity.
The report cited the International Monetary Fund (IMF)'s estimations, saying that Iran's oil and natural gas export revenue fell in the 2013/2014 fiscal year (to end March 20, 2014) by 11 percent to $56 billion. The figure was $118 billion in the 2011/2012 fiscal year (ending March 20, 2012).
In the 2012/2013 fiscal year, oil and natural gas export revenue dropped by 47 percent to $63 billion. The revenue loss is attributed to the precipitous decline in the volume of oil exports from 2011 to 2013 due to western sanctions.
The report also cited FGE and the Arab Oil and Gas Journal, saying that Iran faces continued depletion of its production capacity, as its fields have relatively high natural decline rates of 8% to 11%, coupled with an already low recovery rate of 20% to 25%.
"Sanctions and unfavorable contractual terms have impeded the necessary investment to halt this decline. Moreover, sanctions enacted in late 2011 and throughout 2012 have accelerated Iran's production capacity declines".
IEA says that in 2013, Iran produced approximately 3.2 million barrels per day of petroleum and other liquids (total oil) in 2013, of which roughly 2.7 million bpd was crude oil, 0.4 million bpd was condensate, and 0.1 million bpd was natural gas plant liquids (NGPL).
Iran's total oil production level in 2013 was 1.0 million bpd (almost 25%) lower than the production level of 4.2 million bpd in 2011.
However, the report says that according to the International Energy Agency's report, Iran's oil and condensate exports increased from 1.1 million barrels per day in 2013 to 1.4 million billion barrels per day averagely from January to May 2014, roughly 300,000 million bpd higher than the 2013 and the country's crude oil production increased by 200,000 barrels during mentioned period.
Iran's crude oil and condensate output was 2.5 million bpd in 2011.
Iran, with 157 billion barrels, holds the world's fourth-largest proved crude oil reserves and the world's second-largest natural gas reserves (33.78 trillion cubic meters).