Dari http://www.moscowtimes.com; Wednesday, Jul. 16, 2003.
Iran Finds 38 Billion Barrels of Crude
By Paul Hughes
Reuters
TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran has made a major new oil find containing estimated reserves
of more than 38 billion barrels, making it one of the world's biggest undeveloped
fields, a senior oil official was quoted as saying.
Abolhasan Khamoushi, general director of Iran's Oil Development and Engineering
Co., told the Kayhan evening newspaper that the find, combining three neighboring oil
fields, had been discovered close to the southern port city of Bushehr.
An Oil Ministry spokeswoman confirmed the accuracy of the report but could give
no further details.
Khamoushi said preliminary studies indicated that the Ferdows field contained
30.6 billion barrels, the Mound field 6.63 billion and the Zagheh field 1.3 billion.
"The exact capacity will be announced shortly," Kayhan quoted Khamoushi as
saying.
"Producing oil from these heavy crude fields needs special technology and heavy
investment," he added.
The crude is of high density, making it less valuable on world markets than most
of Iran's 90 billion barrels of proven reserves.
Commercially recoverable reserves are certain to prove much less than the 38
billion barrels in place, but the find could still rival the world's other two leading
undeveloped fields.
Manouchehr Takin, an Iranian oil expert at the Center for Global Energy Studies,
said he thought the crude would be a likely candidate for foreign investment given the
high cost of production, and added the discovery would be significant in the long term
for Iran's oil wealth.
"It is a huge quantity. With heavy oil you could get up 10 percent to 20 percent
of this which could be up to five to even 10 billion barrels," he said. "With the
improvement in heavy oil technology over the last 30 years, this is significant
indeed."
Kazakhstan's Kashagan, under development by a consortium led by Italy's ENI,
also is estimated to hold 38 billion barrels, of which 7 billion to 9 billion are
thought to be commercially recoverable.
Iran's Azadegan, discovered four years ago, holds about 26 billion barrels with
recoverable reserves of 9 billion.
Saudi Arabia's Ghawar, brought onstream in 1951, is the world's biggest oil
field, still containing 70 billion barrels of recoverable reserves.
Hoping to boost its oil production capacity to 5 million barrels per day by 2005
from 4 million bpd, Iran has placed greater emphasis in recent years on exploration
and attracting foreign investment through so-called buyback schemes.
That effort was dealt a major blow last month when Japan announced it would
delay signing a $2 billion deal for a Japanese consortium to develop Azadegan until
doubts about Iran's nuclear ambitions are cleared up. Iran insists its nuclear program
is geared solely to producing electricity.
