Azerbaijan, Baku, May 30/ Trend F.Milad/
The Iranian administration has been obliged to plan for increasing the country's recoverable oil reserves to 162 billion barrels by March 2016, based on which oil reserves will be secured during the next 116 years, if the current level of production is maintained, the Fars News Agency reported.
If recoverable oil reserves of Iran is increased by just one per cent during the fifth five-year development plan (which ends in March 2016), it means that the extractable oil deposit will be boosted by six billion barrels, Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said on Monday.
Increasing the recovery coefficient of existing oil reserves by one per cent annually will raise Iran's worth of reserves by $100 billion by March 2016, Qasemi added.
The total volume of existing crude oil reserves is estimated at around $700 billion barrels, Qasemi said, adding that just 155 billion barrels of the reserves are recoverable, the Mehr News Agency reported.
To attain the goal, some $5 billion should be invested in this field per annum, he noted.
Qasemi said previously that the country's oil output is projected to be increased by 1.5 million barrels per day (bpd) by the next four years. He also added that the daily gas output is planned to rise by 1.47 billion cubic meters.
The Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said Iran's oil output in April was 3.758 million barrels per day (bpd), 182,000 bpd more than its supply in 2011, effectively denying that supply has been impacted by sanctions against Tehran.
The country's oil production has steadily increased in 2012, reaching from 3.576 million bpd in 2011 to 3.758 million bpd in April that shows a 182,000 bpd growth in the mentioned period, the OPEC's report says.
Iran's oil production stood at 3.742 million bpd in first quarter of 2012, indicating some 133,000 bpd increase in comparison to the output in fourth quarter of 2011.