Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb. 6 / Trend F.Milad/
Iran's Petroleum Engineering and Development Company signed a deal in Tehran on Monday, worth around $200 million, with a domestic company to develop the Changooleh oilfield, which is associated with Iraq.
Naji Sadouni, the managing director of the Petroleum Engineering and Development Company told Mehr news agency that the deal is aimed to produce 15,000 barrels of crude in the first phase.
The oilfield holds almost 3.4 billion barrels of in-situ reserve. Mr Sadouni said that the development plan has envisaged boosting the output to 65,000 barrels per day in the future, Fars news agency reported.
The National Iranian Oil Company's managing director has announced 20 contracts will be signed by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2012) to develop joint oilfields.
Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said in August that the Iranian government should consider plans for the development of joint oilfields along the border areas with Iraq.
The government should also increase the budgets for the development of joint oilfields, Mr Qasemi said. "The oil industry's infrastructure needs more than 500 trillion rials (about $50 billion) of investment to achieve the goals of the 20-year economic outlook plan," he was quoted as saying.
"By the end of the fifth development plan (2015), the country's oil production must increase to 5.2 million barrels per day (bpd) and this should come from the country's joint fields," he added.