Minister: Iran to boost oil, gas exploration

Senior Iranian Oil Ministry officials announced that Iran has increased efforts to explore more oil and gas reserves, adding that exploration projects are already underway to discover more hydrocarbon fields in the energy-rich country. "We are not through with exploration projects in Iran at present as there are a lot of work which has remained for us to do," Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qassemi said, speaking to reporters at a press conference on the sidelines of the 15th International Conference on Technology and Innovation in Oil and Gas Industry here in Tehran on Tuesday. "For instance, there are fields along our borderlines, specially in the Northern and Western country, that have not yet gone under exploration," he continued. Meantime, Qassemi described Iran as a major and influential oil producer in the world, and added that Iran's extractable oil reserves stand at 154.8 billion barrels. In June, the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) Director for Exploration Seyed Mahmoud Mohaddes announced that the company has launched new drilling operations in different parts of the country to explore more hydrocarbon fields. Mohaddes said digging operations are already underway in a number of exploration wells, including Attar in the Northeastern province of Khorassan Razavi, Delavaran, Mousian and Shour in the Western province of Ilam, Moshtaq, Sepehr, Mehr and Sohrab in the Southwestern province of Khuzestan, Sim in the Southern province of Fars, and a new well in Farzad A hydrocarbon field in the Persian Gulf. He added that the company also plans to start digging an exploration well in the North-West of Khangiran gas field. In April, Mohaddes had announced that the country has discovered a new hydrocarbon field in the country's Western province of Lorestan. "Seismological studies have been done on the new field and seismological data have been interpreted by a local company," Mohaddes noted at the time. The Islamic Republic has the world's second-largest crude reserves after Saudi Arabia and the second-largest gas reserves after Russia. Also in June, the British energy company (BP) said in its latest Statistical Review of World Energy that Iran increased its crude oil and natural gas production last year. The British company also stated that Iran has oil reserves that would last for the next 88 years and is the second longest-lasting oil source in the world. Based on the Reserves-to-production ratio index, the UAE will be the prominent source of oil for the world with oil reserves that would last for the next 94 years.