Iran and Oman have signed an agreement on their joint study on the shared Hengam Oilfield in the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf.
The agreement was signed in the presence of President Ebrahim Raisi and Oman’s Sultan Haitham bin Tariq Al Said in Tehran on Sunday, the Oil Ministry’s news service Shana reported.
Based on the agreement, a Master Development Plan will be prepared to review scenarios for bilateral cooperation on the exploitation of the joint oilfield.
The agreement followed memorandums of understanding signed during last year’s Oman visit of Iran’s Oil Minister Javad Owji who had accompanied President Raisi.
Iran had earlier signed several MoUs with neighboring states on the integrated development of joint fields, but none of them made progress. Iran has 26 joint oil and gas fields with neighboring countries.
This is the first agreement on cooperation between Iran and a neighboring country in a shared field.
The field is situated approximately 40 km south of Qeshm Island and 30 km from Hengam Island.
The oil and gas field, covering an area of 288 square kilometers, straddles the sea border between Iran and Oman, with about 80% of the oilfield lying in the Iranian territory. The part of the field in Oman is called Bakha.
The jointly owned offshore field is administered by the Iranian Offshore Oil Company.
Field’s History
The oil and gas field was discovered in 1972 by the French oil ELF (now, Total).
The first well of the field was drilled by IOOC in 1975. The development of the field was, however, delayed for a long time due to the lack of a drilling rig.
Appraisal drilling of the offshore field started in 2005 by Petroiran Development Company, a subsidiary of IOOC. The drilling rig Fortuna was leased by Petroiran for six months. The drilling of the second Hengam well was completed in 2006.
Tehran and Muscat had signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly develop the oilfield in 2007, but the agreement did not materialize and Iran decided to develop the field independently.
Trial production from Hengam started in April 2010 with a daily output of 4,000 barrels. The field’s early production started in September 2010, with a daily output of 10,000 barrels of light crude oil. The field’s production was boosted to 30,000 bpd with the completion of fifth well in July 2013.
The oil produced from the field is sent via pipeline to Qeshm Island’s separation and refinery facilities, and then to the Bandar Abbas Oil Refinery.
In-place oil and gas reserves of the field are estimated at 700 million barrels and 56.6 billion cubic meters, respectively.
Cooperation with the neighboring country will definitely lead to a remarkable increase in oil and gas extraction from hydrocarbon reserves, as the oilfield has complexities that prevent continual oil production.
