ALBAWABA - According to an announcement made by Iranian Oil Minister Javad Oji on Sunday, the signature of contracts worth a total of $13 billion dollars is regarded as the most significant development in Iran’s oil industry, aiming to boost daily oil production in 6 fields as Western sanctions stack up.
The official news agency for Iran’s oil industry, Shana, reports that agreements will be signed with the goal of utilizing local expertise to capitalize on six oil fields and increase the country's daily output of crude oil by 350,000 barrels a day on the 73rd anniversary of the nationalization of the Persian oil sector.
The most significant of these contracts is for the advancement of Iran's biggest oil resource, the Azadegan oil field, which is shared with Iraq. Sinopec, a Chinese company, started working in this area in 2011, however halted operations in 2018 due to US sanctions against Iran, according to Iran International, with the project only partially completed.
Because of the intricate structure of Azadegan, only 6% of its oil reserves can be recovered, leaving the other 94%, valued at $2.6 trillion, inaccessible without sophisticated Western equipment. The same issue faces Masjedsoleyman's field, which dropped in production capacity from 170,000 barrels a day in 2017 to only 5,000 in 2023, with new contract only adding 9,000 barrels a day without proper equipment.
Agreements for the advancement of the Azar, Somar, Saman, and Delavaran oil reserves will also be inked with local businesses, with Iran international reporting that Mehdi Heidari, the CEO of the Iranian Offshore Oil Company, which is in charge of running 4 of these fields, saying earlier that local businesses were already working on their development back in In June 2022.
