Iranian energy officials have announced that they have been able to produce a fluid which is used for the drilling of oil wells for the first time.
According to a report carried by news agency IRNA, the breakthrough could dramatically increase production output from a number of the country’s wells.
The Ministry of Petroleum said its experts were able to build a gas micro bubbles generator which facilitates drillings into oil wells – a technology which has so far been in the hands of the United States.
The generator was officially revealed by the Ministry of Petroleum at the 20th International Oil, Gas, Refining and Petrochemical Exhibition in Tehran.
“This technology will be soon tested in one of Iran’s most important oil fields,” said Mohammad Soleymani, a research director from the Ministry of Petroleum.
“It is specifically helpful for fields that have suffered a huge degree of depletion,” Soleymani, who heads the Pardis Pazhuhesh Digging Technology Institute of the Ministry of Petroleum, added.
A majority of Iran’s oil fields are in the second half of their lifespan.
Several of the country’s key fields – whose daily production stood in hundreds of thousands of barrels before the 1979 Islamic Revolution – are presently producing only a few dozen thousands as the result of a significant depletion, IRNA said.
