New Oil Find, Iran’s Second Biggest Reserve: Zanganeh

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said the oil reserve recently discovered in the southwestern province of Khuzestan is the second largest in the country.

In a speech on Monday, Zanganeh gave the details about the oilfield whose discovery President Hassan Rouhani announced a day earlier and said the Namavaran reserve (oil field) is the second biggest found in the country.

He further said the oil field has 53.2 billion barrels of reserves, adding that the reserve adds 22 billion barrels to the country’s estimated crude reserves.

Earlier, 31.3 billion barrels of oil had been discovered in the region and with the new discovery, the in situ amount added is 22.2 billion barrels, he noted.

Out of the amount at the site, only a tenth - 2.2 billion barrels - can be extracted due to technological limitations, Zanganeh said.

In an address to a gathering of people in Iran’s central city of Yazd on Sunday, Rouhani said a huge oil field has been recently discovered in Khuzestan.

He said stepped-up efforts by the National Iranian Oil Company since 2016 resulted in the discovery of the new field which is estimated to hold up to 53 billion barrels of oil.

The big oil reserve lies in an area of 2,400 square kilometers and extends to a depth of 80 meters in a region between the towns of Bostan and Omidiyeh in the province of Khuzestan, the president added.

Rouhani also noted that the major discovery has been made under American sanctions against Iran’s oil industry, stressing that the US has become disappointed with the policy of pressure on Iran.

“The US is well aware that the great Iranian nation is standing against and resisting to the pressure of enemies,” he stated.