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Iran's mysterious oil&gas field in Caspian Sea after two years

Iran Materials 28 August 2013 12:24 (UTC +04:00)
Dalga Khatinoglu, Trend Agency's Iran Service Head
Iran's mysterious oil&gas field in Caspian Sea after two years

Dalga Khatinoglu, Trend Agency's Iran News Service Head/

The latest report of the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) published on August 26 assessed the proven and probable offshore oil and gas reserves of Iran in the Caspian Sea at 0.5 billion barrels and 1 trillion cubic foots (equals to 28.3 billion cubic meters) respectively.

Prior to that, British Petroleum released its annual report on May, putting Iran's all proven gas reserves at 33.6 trillion cubic meters in 2012, which indicates no change compared to 2011.

However, Iran announced discovering a huge oil and gas field in December 2011 after years-longed operations with Amir Kabir rig in the Caspian Sea. Iran called this field Sardar-e Jangal.

EIA doesn't reject the existence of this field, but hasn't confirmed it as well, saying Iran "claims" the field holds 100 million barrels of oil and 50 tcf of gas.

There have been several numbers announced by Iranian officials about the amount of oil and gas reserves on the mentioned field so far.

According to the latest announcement, Iran's Oil Ministry claimed that the Sardar-e Jangal field's discovered oil and gas layers hold in total two billion barrels of light crude oil alongside with 50 trillion cubic foots of gas reserves (equals to 1.4 trillion cubic meters).

In May 2012 Iran's Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said that oil erupted from the first well and the flares of Amir Kbair rig is light and everybody can go there and see them, but neither photo nor film of the flares has been published yet.

On September 30, 2012 the National Iranian Oil Company announced that it has begun drilling the second exploratory oil well in the deep waters of the Caspian Sea.

Despite all claims from the Iranian side, a European top diplomat anonymously told Trend on Jan.14 that "according to satellite observations, the location of this rig (Amir Kabir) has not changed from December 2011 to December 2012 and no sign of thermal activity was observed above this rig during the aforementioned period".

According to him, the rig locates at about 38°23' N 51°16' E.

Depth issue

Sardar-e Jangal field's first well reportedly was drilled 700 meters in depth through benthos in 1000-metre deep waters.

There is not any hydrocarbon source discovering experience among the other four Caspian literal countries at a 700 meter depth of benthos. For instance Russia's Yuri Korchagin field's oil layer located at a depth of 3500 meters, Azerbaijan's Azer-Chirag-Guneshli fields at 3500 to 4000 meters and Kazakhstan's Kashagan at a 4700 metres and the closest field to Sardar-e Jangal is Azerbaijan's Shahdeniz gas field at a well depth above 7000 metres, so hearing information about discovering oil or gas at 700 meters depth is confusing.

Amir Kabir rig

The other matter is that Amir Kabir is a submersible rig, usable for only exploration works, not a fixed platform to extract gas or oil. The mentioned rig's type is GVA 4000 and according to GVA official website that can only drill.

Construction of the Amir Kabir platform under Switzerland's GVA family platform licence was started 11 years ago and then completed by Iran's Sadra Company. In addition, a drilling operation control system at this platform technically belongs to the Norwegians, whose company Maritime Hydraulic held training sessions for Iranian oil workers.

Iran has neither a pipeline nor FPSO vessel in the Caspian Sea to carry oil from the field to the shore.

The Amir Kabir rig can operate at a 1000-metre depth waters according to GVA's website.

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