TEHRAN- The managing director of National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) said that rebuilding and renovating the digging fleet is a necessity in the country’s oil and gas industry.

Mohsen Khojasteh-Mehr reiterated that reducing the cost and time of digging operation is a symbol of oil and gas industry’s knowledge-based upstream sector.

“In this regard, the drilling fleet of National Iranian Drilling Company (NIDC) must be rebuilt and modernized, and at the same time we must take care of the entire drilling fleet and drilling industry in the country so as not to harm this industry, because about 50 percent of development and investment costs in the upstream sector are related to drilling”, the official stressed.

Underlining that NIDC is the most resistant sector of oil industry, Khojasteh-Mehr said that NIOC supports all companies active in the field of rebuilding and renovating the digging fleet.

The NIDC managing director has announced the use of more than 82 percent of the company's operational capacity in the past Iranian calendar year 1400 (ended on March 20) in the implementation of oil industry programs in the field of maintaining and increasing oil production capacity in the country.

Explaining the performance of the NIDC in 1400, Hamidreza Golpayegani has said: "While at the beginning of the year, 55 drilling rigs out of a total of 73 were operational, with the development of activities, this number reached 60 rigs during the year."

As the official has announced, NIDC dug and completed digging operation of 75 oil and gas wells in the past Iranian calendar year.

According to Golpayegani, the drilled wells consisted of six development, five exploratory, and 64 workover ones.

The official stated that 56 of the mentioned wells were drilled in the operational zone of the National Iranian South Oil Company (NISOC), 10 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), three wells in the framework of project and two in the operational zone of the drilling management department of National Iranian Oil company (NIOC).

He said that 76,125 meters of drilling was conducted for drilling the mentioned wells, adding that 44 light and heavy drilling rigs of NIDC are operating in the operational zone of NISCO, two rigs including one onshore and one offshore, in the zone of IOOC, seven rigs in the zone of PEDEC, six rigs in the zone of the drilling management department of NIOC, and one rigs in the project of using underground waters implemented by the Vice-Presidency for Science and Technology.

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 Iranian year 1399.

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.

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 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