Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct.19/ Trend G.Mehdi/
Conducting four-dimension seismic monitoring in the Persian Gulf show Iran 's oil and gas reserves have been increased in the region, the Mehr News Agency quoted Iranian Offshore Oil Company's managing director Mahmoud Zirakchianzadeh as saying.
The operations have been carried out at the Abouzar oilfield and Forouz-B gas field in the Persian Gulf, he added.
Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi has said that it is projected that the country's oil output will increase by 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) by 2016.
Iran's oil production stood at 3.742 million bpd in the first quarter of 2012, which was an increase of 133,000 bpd in comparison to the output in the fourth quarter of 2011.
Iran has attached priority to boosting gas production capacity at its joint oilfields with Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Qasemi has ordered all contractors of the South Pars gas field development projects to work round the clock in three shifts to complete the development of all phases, especially phases 12, 15, 16, 17, and 18.
The South Pars gas field is shared by Iran and Qatar. The Iranian share, which is divided into 29 phases, has about 14 trillion cubic meters of gas, or about eight per cent of total world reserves and more than 18 billion barrels of liquefied natural gas.
Daily gas production in Iran is about 600 million cubic meters and this is projected to increase to 1.2 billion cubic meters in the future. According to the National Iranian Gas Company, the country's oil and natural gas reserves account for 10 per cent and 16 per cent of the total world reserves, respectively.
Iran, with 155 billion barrels of recoverable oil reserves, ranks fourth worldwide, after Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Canada.
With 34 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves, Iran has the world's second largest natural gas reserves after Russia.