TEHRAN – Iran has started extracting 65,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil from Azar field which is its full capacity in the first development phase, the managing director of Iran's Oil Industries Engineering and Construction Company (OIEC) said.

According to Gholamreza Manouchehri, the first phase of the field’s development project has reached 97 percent of physical progress and the project will be officially inaugurated in near future.

Pointing to the Azar field’s special geological conditions, the official said: "This issue had made the development of this field very difficult, and international companies that had previously done the exploration work in this field, believed that only they would be able to develop this field.”

“However, domestic companies took over the development of the field, and both financing and implementation were successfully done by capable Iranian companies.”

Manouchehri further stated that the project has been financed by the National Development Fund (NDF), adding: "Currently, this project is 97 percent complete and has reached a nominal production of 65,000 barrels per day."

Under the first phase plan, 18 wells have been drilled in the field, all of which are completed, the official said.

Azar, one of the joint fields with Iraq, spans an overall area of 482 square kilometers in southeast of Mehran town in the western Iranian province of Ilam.

The field is estimated to hold 2.5 billion barrels of oil in place. The volume of possible oil reserves to be extracted from the Azar field is estimated to be around 400 million barrels.

Back in July 2017, Russia’s Gazprom signed a cooperation agreement with OIEC over the development of the oil field. In December 2017, the two companies submitted their joint plan to the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) to develop the field.

The Russian company, however, left the project in early 2018, and OIEC took over.

As there are still no processing facilities installed at the place of this field, its output is going to be sent to the processing facilities of Dehloran oil field through a 120-km pipeline, according to Shana.

The field is developed jointly by OIEC and Oil Industry Pension Fund Investment Company (OPIC).

EF/MA