Early production of Yadavaran oilfield in Khuzestan Province started with a daily capacity of 20,000 barrels.
SHANA quoted the oil field's development project manager as saying that the project is now in the Front-End Engineering and Design (FEED) stage and is 45-50% complete.
Mohammadreza Naderi added the field's output is projected to hit 85,000 barrels per day in the first phase and to reach the ceiling of 180,000 bpd finally.
China's biggest refiner, Sinopec, and Iran signed a $2 billion agreement on developing the Yadavaran oil field in 2007.
The agreement completed a 2004 memorandum of understanding for the state-owned Sinopec Group to help develop the huge oilfield. Sinopec Group, the state-owned parent of Sinopec Corp., agreed in October 2004 to take the lead in developing the Iranian oilfield and to buy 10 million metric tons of liquefied natural gas every year for 25 years in a deal worth as much as $100 billion.
The Yadavaran deal calls for the Chinese company to invest in developing the oilfield in two phases, with the first phase to produce 85,000 barrels per day to be carried out in four years. The second phase, to produce an additional 95,000 barrels per day, is to be completed in another three years.
Yadavaran oilfield is one of the largest untapped fields in the world and is expected to have a potential output of 300,000 barrels per day of crude oil. It has 3.2 billion barrels of recoverable reserves, with recoverable gas reserves estimated at 2.7 trillion cubic feet or 80 billion cubic meters.