TEHRAN- National Iranian Drilling Company (NIDC) dug and completed digging operation of 62 oil and gas wells during the first ten months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21, 2021-January 20, 2022), an official with the company said.

According to Masoud Afshar, the deputy head of NIDC for drilling operation, the drilled wells consisted of four development, four exploratory, and 54 workover ones.

The official stated that 46 of the mentioned wells were drilled in the operational zone of the National Iranian South Oil Company (NISOC), nine wells were drilled in the fields under the supervision of the Iranian Offshore Oil Company (IOOC), three in the fields under the operation of Petroleum Engineering and Development Company (PEDEC), one in the field under the supervisor of Iranian Central Oil Fields Company (ICOFC), and two in the operational zone of the drilling management department of the National Iranian Oil company (NIOC).

Since the beginning of this year, the drilling area of the wells has reached 65,493 meters, he said, and added that 14 drilling rigs are being relocated in the operational positions.

NIDC owns 70 light, heavy and super-heavy drilling rigs, including 67 onshore drilling rigs and three offshore rigs.

The company managed to carry out 10,182 meters of horizontal and directional drilling in 43 oil and gas wells across the country during the previous Iranian calendar year (ended on March 20, 2021), according to the Head of NIDC’s Special Operations Department Ali Daqayeqi.

Some 654 meters of core extraction drilling was also conducted in the mentioned period which was a huge achievement for assessing the condition of the country’s oil and gas reserves.

In November 2021, an official with the NIDC announced that the company has implemented 2,559 special and technical operations for the applicant companies, which are subsidiaries of the NIDC, and the private sector during the first seven months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21-October 22, 2021).

Mehran Makvandi, the deputy managing director of NIDC for technical and engineering affairs, said that of the mentioned offered services, 2,042 operations were in the field of technical services management, and 517 operations were special services.

Back in July 2021, NIDC’s Director of Renovation and Upgrading Shahram Shamipour had announced that the company had allocated 5.2 trillion rials (about $18 million) for the renovation and upgrading of its drilling rigs and equipment in the company’s operational, technical, specialized, and logistical departments.

According to him, the renovation and upgrading operations are aimed at improving the performance of these rigs which are active in the country’s oil and gas field development projects.

Shamipour noted that the equipment going through renovation operations include fluid pumps, draw-works machinery, charting tools, pumps for cementing and acidizing trucks, tow trucks, cranes, piping machines, generators, hydrogen sulfide gas treatment systems, acid-coated storage tanks, and cement transport bunkers. 

Considering the National Iranian Oil Company’s new strategies for strengthening the presence of domestic companies in the development of the country’s oil fields, NIDC, as a major subsidiary of the company, has been supporting such companies by lending them drilling rigs and other necessary equipment.

After the U.S. reimposition of sanctions against Iran, indigenizing the know-how for the manufacturing of the parts and equipment applied in different industrial sectors is one of the major strategies that the Islamic Republic has been strongly following up to reach self-reliance and nullify the sanctions.

Oil, gas, and petrochemical industries have outstanding performances in this due, with indigenizing the knowledge for manufacturing many parts and equipment that were previously imported.

Among different sectors of the mentioned industries, drilling could be mentioned as a prominent example in this regard.

MA/MA