Azerbaijan, Baku, Jan. 2 / Trend F.Milad/
Iran has commissioned its first wholly owned drilling rig in the Persian Gulf, the North Drilling Company (NDC) managing director stated.
Some $153 million has been invested in building, transporting and commissioning the rig, the NDC director Hedayatollah Khademi said, the Pana news agency reported.
All the jack-up rigs which were installed during the past 29 years in the Persian Gulf had been rented, Mr Khademi added.
The jack-up named Sahar-e 1, has the capacity to drill deep down to 30,000 feet into water, the official said.
Iran plans to commission seven new drilling rigs in the South Pars gas field by September next year, the Mehr news agency reported.
Fir the time being, 11 drilling rigs are in operation in 13 phases of the gas field. Developing all the phases will boost Iran's gas output by 700 million cubic metres per day, the report added.
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 metres of gas, or about eight per cent of the total world reserves and more than 18 billion barrels of liquefied natural gas resources.
Iran plans to increase the number of its drilling rigs operating in its onshore and offshore oilfields by 36 units to reach 134 units by March 2014, the National Iranian Oil Company's (NIOC) managing director said.
Ahmad Qalebani told the Shana news agency that the country's daily oil and gas outputs should amount to five million barrels and 1.47 billion cubic metres by 2015.
Qalebani announced in November that 20 contracts will be signed by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2012) to develop joint oilfields.