Official: Iran ahead of schedule in oil and gas field delivery

Azerbaijan, Baku, Feb. 22/ Trend F.Milad/

To date Iran has explored six new oil and gas fields in the current calendar year to end March 19, so that it has outpaced the objectives of the fifth five-year development plan (2011-2015), the National Iranian Oil Company's director for exploration stated.

"The plan intended adding 500 million barrels of oil and 4.5 trillion cubic feet of gas to the country's oil and gas recoverable reserves in the first year, but we have explored these amounts three times and five times respectively," Mahmoud Mohaddes told Fars news agency.

With a 900 billion cubic metre increase in the past two years, Iran in-situ natural gas reserves has surged to 34 trillion cubic metres, an official with Iran's Oil Ministry said in November 2011. Iran sits on the world's second largest natural gas reserves after Russia.

Mohsen Khojaste-Mehr told the Mehr news agency that the country's gas production which stands at 250 million cubic metres per day is likely to reach 1.4 billion cubic metres per day.

Oil minister Rostam Qasemi has announced the country's recoverable oil reserves stand at 154.8 billion barrels.

The Shana news agency quoted Mr Qasemi as saying that the new explorations have increased the amount from the previous figure of 151 billion barrels.