Baku, Azerbaijan, Aug. 23
By Dalga Khatinoglu – Trend:
Iran added 532 million barrels (mb) of oil and 522 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas to its extractable reserves since the beginning of Hassan Rouhani's presidency in mid-2013, an Iranian official told Trend Aug.23 on condition of anonymity.
"Currently the country's recoverable proved oil and gas reserves stand at 159 billion barrels and 34 trillion cubic meters. In total the reserves of 18 oil and gas fields or layers were proved during August 2013 to August 2016," said the official.
Iran has about 650-700 billion barrels of in-situ oil reserves, of which 159 billion is extractable, based on the current 23-25 percent recovery rate of fields in average.
The official also added that despite soaring of the country's proved oil reserves during the last four decades, the amount of new discovered oil and gas fields was far less than during the pre-1960s period.
According to the official, the volume of proved recoverable reserves was about 58 billion barrels when the Islamic Republic was established in 1979, but the figure increased to 133 billion barrels in 2005, when ex-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office and about 158.5 billion barrels when Hassan Rouhani became president in mid-August 2013.
"Considering the 30-billion barrel output of the country during 1979-2007, Iran's proved reserves had increased by 108 billion barrels. It means that Iran added 138 billion barrels to its extractable reserves during this period," said the official.
Coming to the new fields discovery, the official added that the volume which was discovered during the Islamic Republic (1979-2016) is less than 20 percent of the total reserves that had been discovered until 1960s.
The official also noted that Iran's oil production increased by 850,000 b/d during the post-sanctions era, while the capacity of oil storage facilities increased by 4 mb to 28 mb.
Iran's oil output was more than 3.8 mb/d in the pre-sanctions era, but plunged to 2.8 mb/d after imposing the western sanctions on the country in mid-2012.
The sanctions was eliminated in January 2016 after implementing a nuclear deal between Tehran and P5+1 Group, including US, UK, France, Russia, China plus Germany.