BAKU, Azerbaijan, Mar. 2
By Elnur Baghishov – Trend:
It is estimated that Iran will extract more than 400 million barrels of oil from the Iran-Iraq joint Azar oil field (called Badra in Iraq) over the next 40 years, Executor of the plan of Petroleum Engineering and Development Company (PEDEC) on development of the Azar oil field Keyvan Yarahmadi said, Trend reports referring to the Shana news agency.
Yarahmadi noted that according to recent estimates, the Azar oil field contains about 4.3 billion barrels of crude oil. The extracted crude oil is light and has API 32 and API 33 degrees. In total, 36 million barrels of crude oil have been extracted from this field so far.
He added that 19 extraction wells and 1 waste well were drilled in the field. The average depth was 4,600 meters.
The official stressed that the first central refining unit with the refining capacity of 71,500 barrels of crude oil per day has been built, a 40-kilometer-long water pipeline has been laid, and an 11/132-kilovolt power substation has been built.
Yarahmadi said that a 16-inch pipeline with a length of 320 km was also laid to transport oil and gas extracted joint with oil.
According to him, the extracted crude oil will be transported to the Cheshmehkhosh refinery, and gas to the NGL 3100 plant.
“In total, 1.25 billion euro was spent on the development of the Azar oil field. This figure is about 100 million euros less than the initial estimate. These funds were spent under loans from the National Development Fund of Iran ($800 million by Bank Sepah and $200 million by the Middle East Bank). The rest was spent by the Oil Industry Pension Fund Investment Company (OPIC),” the official said.
On March 1, the Azar oil field and the plant of the Kangan Petro Refining Company were officially put into operation in Iran at a total cost of $2.6 billion.