Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 13
By Emil Ilgar – Trend:
Iran holds over 836B barrels of liquid hydrocarbon reserves with 28.5 percent recovery rate, Karim Zobaidi, the NIOC (National Iranian Oil Company) official in charge of reservoirs, said.
According to the website of the Oil Ministry, he added that the in-situ liquid reserves, including crude oil, liquids, and gas condensates had amounted to 836.47 billion barrels, of which 239 billion barrels were recoverable.
From the recoverable reserves of liquid hydrocarbons, some 157 billion barrels remain unrecovered. In other words, Iran has extracted 82 billion barrels of oil as of now (during 108 years).
Zobaidi put the in-situ crude oil reserves at 711.5 billion barrels, of which 175.39 billion barrels was recoverable and 102 billion barrels of which has remained unrecovered. Iran has extracted more than 73 billion barrels of oil so far.
He added that there are 120 oilfields and 50 gas fields in the country. Meanwhile, there are 358 oil and gas reservoirs, of which 95 reservoirs have not been developed so far.
Some 68.5% of the fields are not in good condition and require methods for boosting their outputs, he noted.
Iran held a conference last December and introduced a new model of oil and gas contract for foreign companies, which is called Iran Petroleum Contract (IPC).
“At the Tehran conference, 52 reservoirs were introduced, but 31 oil and gas fields have been prioritized, of which 17 are joint fields, categorized into small, medium, and large ones,” he explained.
One percent increase in the crude oil recovery rate will boost the oil output by 7 billion barrels, he said, adding that with the oil price at $40 per barrel, the country will earn more than $280 billion.
The average recovery rates of the liquid hydrocarbon reserves and crude oil reserves are 28.5 percent and 24.5 percent respectively. Iran’s gas reserves stands at around 34 trillion cubic meters.