Iran finds new gas field worth $133b

A new gas field containing around 495 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 658 million barrels of gas condensates, roughly valued at 133 billion dollars, has been discovered at Assalouyeh in south Iran, the NIOC managing director announced here on Monday. The field has the capacity to produce up to 2 billion cubic feet (60 million cubic meters) of gas and 88,000 barrels of condensates per day, NIOC head Ahmad Qalehbani said. Iran discovered four gas fields in the last calendar year (ended on March 20, 2011), totally holding 336 billion cubic meters of natural gas and 213 million barrels of condensates, worth nearly 179 billion dollars, Qalehbani said. The value of Iran’s annual oil and gas production has reached $217 billion which will raise in the coming years due to the vast new investments in the sector, Deputy Oil Minister Mohsen Khojasteh-Mehr said on July 3. “By 2010, Iran produced on average 4.2 million barrels of oil, 600 million cubic meters of gas, and 400,000 barrels of gas condensates per day,” Khojasteh-Mehr added. The daily output of oil will increase to 4.4 million barrels, the output of gas condensates will rise to 1.1 million barrels, and the natural gas output will rise to 1.47 billion cubic meters in the next five years, he added. Iran plans to invest $15.8 billion for the development of the untapped phases of the South Pars gas field, $4.5 billion for joint oil fields, $3.7 billion for domestic oil fields, and $6.5 billion for other domestic gas fields in the current year, he explained.