Iran is planning to significantly boost production from the West Karoun oilfields located on the border with Iraq by stepping up development, local news agencies have reported.
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The oilfields are expected to add 280,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) to exisiting output by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 19, 2016).
Iran’s Petroleum Engineering and Development Company (PEDEC) said that the first development phase of the fields will be implemented over the course of four years.
When the second development phase is completed, the fields are expected to add over one million barrels of oil to the country’s daily output.
In January, Abdolreza Haji Hossein-Nejad, the managing director of PEDEC, said development of West Karoun oilfields is among the priorities projects of Iran’s Oil Ministry.
The Islamic Republic plans to increase crude oil output to 5.7mn barrels per day by 2018, according to Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh.
With 157bn barrels of proven oil reserves, Iran holds the world’s fourth-biggest oil deposits, according to a BP 2014 report.
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