• Wednesday, 16 May, 2012

Iran climbing up reserves ladder

 09 July 2004 09:05 GMT

Iran's Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh has raised estimates of the country's proven oil reserves to 132 billion barrels, the second largest in the world after Saudi Arabia.
Some of the increase is attributed to new oil-rich layers near Azadegan, the giant discovery of 1999, which was awarded to the Japanese.

The new estimate is 15% higher than previous Iranian claims and well over the 100 billion barrels cited by Opec.

Opec's website has Saudi Arabia in first place with 259 billion barrels, followed by Iraq at 115 billion barrels, Iran at 99 billion barrels and the United Arab Emirates at 98 billion barels.

US figures and some other experts have estimated Iranian reserves at 93 billion barrels or less. However, Iran has said the lower estimates do not take into account recent discoveries such as at Azadegan, where reserves could exceed 6 billion barrels.

BP's authoritative annual statistical review would seem to support Iran's higher estimates, putting them at just under 131 billion barrels.

However, the BP review says that its reserves figures are based on a combination of official data, such as from Opec and third-party sources, and its definition of proven reserves does not necessarily meet the US Securities & Exchange Commission guidelines, nor necessarily BP's own view of proved reserves.

The most recent discoveries are at the Kushk and Hossainieh fields, on the eastern side of south Azadegan.

These two fields were at one time considered to be part of Azadegan and were later treated as one independent field they have now been renamed "Yadavaran" (memorial to the fallen).

Zanganeh said Yadavaran's proven reserves, including shared underlayers, are estimated at more than 3 billion barrels, and eventual output will be 300,000 barrels per day to 400,000 bpd.

Yadavaran is sought by Shell, Total, Repsol-YPF, Lukoil and several Indian and Chinese companies on a shortlist.

However, the National Iranian Oil Company has made participation there conditional on the companies showing interested in long-term liquefied natural gas offtake from Iran.

Zanganeh, speaking at a press conference in Tehran, also said that Iran's sustainable production capacity would reach 4.3 million bpd by March 2005. This would be short of the official target of 4.5 million bpd.

Iran's current output capacity is estimated at about 4 million bpd. Its Opec quota is 3.74 million bpd.

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