The Oil Ministry has invested around $10 billion on the development of Azar joint oilfield in Ilam Province to increase the output from the field, which currently stands at 65,000 barrels per day, the oil minister said.
“The ministry plans to invest about $4 billion in the next five years to develop the field along with other oilfields and energy projects in the western province,” Javad Owji was also quoted as saying on Friday during a visit to Azar Oilfield.
“When all the development projects related to the oilfields are complete, the crude oil output capacity of the province is expected to reach 330,000 barrels per day,” he said.
“Ilam accounts for about 3% of the country's oil and gas reserves, and the Oil Ministry plans to invest $2 billion in the province’s upstream sector of the oil industry, especially on the development of Azar Oilfield.”
The minister noted that in the downstream sector, including the petrochemical industry and value chain complementary industries, projects worth $2 billion have been defined.
Oil extraction from the field started in 2017 with a daily production of 15,000 barrels and reached 30,000 barrels a year later.
Stretching over 400 square kilometers, Azar Oilfield is shared with Iraq, where it is known as Badra. It is located 20 kilometers from the city of Mehran in Ilam Province in the Anaran exploration block.
Azar holds 2.5 billion barrels of in-place oil, of which 400 million barrels can be extracted. It is one of the six fields owned jointly with Iraq, along with Dehloran, West Paydar, Naft-Shahr, Azadegan and Yadavaran.
Although Iran’s oil industry has been hit by US sanctions since mid-2018, which reduced Iran’s oil exports to record lows, Iran has continued to increase production in the hope that the siege will be lifted soon.
The former US government imposed economic sanctions in August 2018, targeted key industrial, oil, banking and insurance sectors. In the May of that year, the former US president, Donald Trump, tore up the landmark 2015 nuclear deal Iran had signed with the six world powers.
In November 2018, Washington imposed the so-called “maximum pressure” policy to intensify economic pressure.
Iran shipped over 2.5 million barrels per day of crude oil in April 2018. Unofficial reports show the figure plunged to 200,000 bpd.
However, Iran has not stopped oil exploration, development and capacity building under the economic war, as the country prepares for the post-sanction era when it seeks to reach a maximum production of 4 million bpd.
Award for Azar Field Developer
The Iranian developer of Azar field development project won the IPMA Global Project Excellence Management Award in the mega projects section.
Sarvak Azar Engineering and Development Company, which develops the joint field as one of the most complex oilfields in the country, won the gold medal in IPMA Global Award for Project Excellence Management.
The Global Project Excellence Award is held annually by the IPMA International Institute in different parts of the world.
This year, the most important part of the international award was in the field of mega projects, where SAED won the gold medal in an intense competition with companies from Finland and India.
The IPMA World Award is designed in 10 sections, of which the Mega Projects Award is the most important part, and it is a matter of pride that in addition to Iran's unparalleled brilliance in project management with new international models in the upstream oil industry, other Iranian youths shone brightly: Fereshteh Mir-Hosseini won a gold medal in the project management category for young people under 35, Saeed Norouzi in the section of agile projects in this competition won a bronze medal and Alireza Aslan Hosseini won a bronze medal.
Since 2002, IPMA organizes an annual international competition for projects and programs presenting awards to teams that attain great achievements in project and program management.
The IPMA Global Project Excellence Awards support project teams in their continuous improvement efforts.
