TEHRAN – National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) has started primary development studies on the country’s newly discovered Namavaran oil reservoir, an official with the company announced.

“Research activities have started in Namavaran oil field so that we can propose a roadmap for the development of this field,” Reza Dehqan told IRNA on Thursday.

The 53-billion oil Namavaran reservoir was discovered back in 2019.

According to Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, Namavaran is the second biggest oil reserve discovery in the history of Iran’s oil industry.

The reservoir covers 2400 square kilometers of land and is placed nearly 3.1 kilometers beneath the ground surface and the thickness of the oil layers is estimated to be about 80 meters, the official explained.

The area which this oil reservoir covers includes several already discovered oil fields such as Darkhovin, Jofair, Sepehr, Mansouri, Sousangerd and Ab-Teimour, with a total in-place reserve of nearly 31 billion barrels, so the new discovery, in fact, adds nearly 22 billion barrels to the country’s in-place oil reserves, he elaborated.

Considering a recovery factor of 10 percent, Namavaran reservoir will currently add 2.2 billion barrels of oil to the country’s recoverable reserves.

“The field's exploration began with the most advanced exploration techniques in the Iranian calendar year of 1395 (started in March 2016) with drilling three assessment wells, which resulted in discovering the huge oil reservoir,” Zanganeh said in November 2019.

Speaking in a ceremony for unveiling the details of the reservoir, Zanganeh stressed the important role of new technologies in increasing the recovery factor of the country’s oil fields, saying “even one percent increase in the recovery factor of such a huge reservoir with 53 billion of reserve means 530 million barrels of more oil, which considering the current oil prices would be nearly $32 billion more revenue for the country, so we need to take all necessary measures to improve our knowledge and technologies for increasing the recovery factor in all oil fields across the country.”

He finally noted that the development of the Namavaran reservoir will be carried out as part of the development projects of Sepehr, Jofair, Ab-Teymour and Mansuri fields.

EF/MA