Iran aims to boost its crude oil production capacity by 160,000 barrels per day following the completion of expansion projects at its North Azadegan and Yadavaran oilfields, a senior Iranian oil official was quoted as saying.
The two oilfields are both operational and ready to be officially inaugurated after the February 26 parliamentary elections, Abdolreza Haji-Hosseinnejad was cited as saying by Iran’s oil ministry news agency Sana on Saturday.
Haji-Hosseinnejad is head of Iran’s Petroleum Engineering and Development Company (PEDEC).
North Azadegan can produce 75,000 bpd and Yadavaran 85,000 bpd, he said. The gas section of Yadavaran oil field is waiting for LNG facilities to become productive, he added.
China’s Sinopec and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) started developing the two fields, both located in southwestern Iran, but could not complete the work due to international sanctions on Tehran, the official said.
Iran terminated CNPC’s contract to develop the Azadegan oilfield in 2014 after the Chinese energy giant ignored repeated appeals to continue working on it.
Yadavaran has reserves of 31bn barrels of light and heavy crude oil while North Azadegan has a 5.7bn barrels of crude reserves.
Iran also expects crude production at its North Yaran oilfield to reach 30,000 bpd by March 2017, the end of the next Iranian year, while South Azadegan will reach a production capacity of 60,000 bpd around the same date, Haji-Hosseinnejad said, according to Sana.
