Iran is to enhance oil recovery from its offshore fields by injecting 25 percent more water into them, a senior Iranian oil official said, Press TV reported.
Water injection is a method of improved oil recovery (IOR) applied to offshore reservoirs, said Managing Director of the Iranian Offshore Oil Company (IOOC) Mahmoud Zirakchianzadeh.
"Currently, 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) of water are injected into the IOOC-administered fields aimed at increasing [oil] output. The figure will reach 500,000 to 530,000 bpd this [Iranian calendar] year [which ends March 2014]," the official stated.
Zirakchianzadeh said simultaneous water and gas injection into the Doroud oil field, located off the Persian Gulf island of Kharg in southern Iran, will enhance its recovery rate from 23 to 33 percent.
Iran's offshore oil reserves in the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf are valued at $2.75 trillion.
The projection is based on a 25-percent recovery factor from 106 billion barrels of in-place oil in the waters of the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea.
Iran sits atop more than 96 billion barrels of in-place oil in the Persian Gulf.
Iran envisages a one-percent recovery enhancement from its oil deposits by 2015 when the country's Fifth Five-Year Economic Development Plan ends.
With 137.6 billion barrels of proven reserves, Iran has the world's fourth largest crude deposits, and the second largest gas reserves, estimated at 29.61 trillion cubic meters (tcm).