Azerbaijan, Baku, May 30/Trend M. Moezzi
Iran's current oil recovery factor of 25 per cent means 75 per cent of its oil reserves remain underground, Pana news agency reports.
The nation's Fifth Five-Year Socio Economic Development Plan (2011-2015), mandates a one per cent increase in the recovery factor from the country's hydrocarbon reserves. About 25 per cent of that deadline has passed, said Ahmad Qalebani, the managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC).
To achieve its goal, Iran's onshore and offshore oil and gas reserves have been split, with the offshore recovery factor at 18.6 per cent and the onshore reserves recovery factor is 26.9 per cent. That's a recovery factor of 25.42 per cent.
The average recovery factor from the country's offshore gas reserves is 77.49 per cent while that of onshore reserves is 65.22 per cent, said Mr. Qalebani.
NIOC's managing director made the comments at a ceremony marking the start of a consortium of universities that will work on boosting Iran's recovery factor.
Mr. Qalebani said the consortium's work will be the NIOC's biggest research project and added that Saudi Arabia and China recently agreed to form a research centre dedicated to greater oil and gas recovery factors.
If Iran increases the ratio of how much oil it extracts from its reserves by just one per cent during the fifth five-year development plan (which ends in March 2016), the country will earn as much as six years of the national budget, oil minister Rostam Qasemi had said in previous comments.