Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb.12 / Trend F.Mehdi/
Iran has discovered oil and gas reserves valued at up to $400 billion in the first nine months of the current Iranian calendar year which started on March 20, 2012, IRNA quoted National Iranian Gas Company managing director Ahmad Qalebani as saying.
In recent years, most of the discoveries have been related to gas fields, but this year most of them are related to oilfields, he added.
On January 22, the Mehr News agency quoted Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi as saying that Iran has discovered a huge oilfield shared with Iraq and a large gas field shared with Turkmenistan.
"It is possible that the oilfield also contains natural gas," he noted.
He went on to say that since the past Iranian calendar year, over two billion barrels of in-situ crude oil reserves have been discovered across the country.
According to BP's annual statistics, Iran's gas production (excluding flared and recycled gas) in 2011 was 153.3 billion cubic meters (some 420 million cubic meters per day), while the consumption volume was 151.8bcm in 2011, indicating a 1.5bcm negative balance.
In December, Iran's deputy oil minister said that Iran's proven crude oil and natural gas reserves are worth around $37 trillion.
Reserves include 100 billion barrels of crude oil, 94 billion barrels of condensates and a 207 billion barrel equivalent of natural gas, he explained.
Iran's daily gas output is projected to hit 1.4 billion cubic meters by 2015.
Iran ranks fourth worldwide with 155 billion barrels of recoverable oil reserves 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.