Iran’s Oil Minister announced Monday, the discovery of two new natural gas fields according to a report from Dow Jones newswires.
“Forouz gas field is located in the Persian Gulf near Kish island and has 700 billion cubic metres of gas reserves,” Masoud Mir-kazemi said, adding that when brought on stream the field could produce around 70 million cubic metres of gas daily.
The combined gas reserves of the two fields amount to around 800 billion cubic metres (28 trillion cubic feet), he told reporters.
He said the second field was found in the northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi and has 62.5 billion cubic metres of gas reserves.
This second field is capable of producing four million cubic metres of gas daily, the minister added.
Iran has the world’s second-largest reserves of natural gas after Russia.
The South Pars field in the Gulf has around 14 trillion cubic meters of gas, which represents about eight percent of world reserves.
In April Mir-Kazemi said domestic gas prices should be hiked tenfold, to help the state save about US$17 billion and boost development of the gas and refined products industry. The minister said that the Oil Ministry had asked the government to allow it to hike prices in order to stave off a “consumption crisis”.
