Iran's Petroleum University of Technology and Austria’s University of Leoben signed on Tuesday a non-disclosure agreement on oilfield development plans and a memorandum of understanding on establishing a joint center for increasing oil extraction.
According to ISNA, the Iranian university, which is a pioneering academic body cooperating with oilfield-based plans, has chosen the University of Leoben as one of its partners. It can help successfully implement a plan to increase Gachsaran Oilfield’s extraction rate.
Holger Ott, chair of reservoir engineering at the Austrian university, has headed a delegation to Ahvaz, the provincial capital of Khuzestan, and held a meeting with Karim Salahshour, head of PUT.
The Petroleum University of Technology is a leading Iranian public university funded by the Ministry of Petroleum in 1939 in Abadan in response to the increasing industrialization of oil sector. It is the second oldest university in Iran after the University of Tehran.
University of Leoben is one of the three technical universities of Austria, offering educational and research courses in the fields of mining, metallurgy and material sciences.
The two sides negotiated ways of collaborating on oilfield-based projects, development of laboratories, enrichment of classroom contents, professional training and the activation of previous MoUs between the two universities.
In 2015, University of Leoben and the French Institute of Petroleum, also known as IFP, signed two MoUs with PUT to conduct technological studies at Gachsaran Oilfield.
In addition, they agreed this week to establish a joint center focusing on enhancing oil extraction in the fractured reservoirs.
A fractured reservoir is one in which naturally occurring fractures either have or are predicted to have a significant effect on reservoir fluid flow.
Ott also addressed a conference on the application of Digital Rocks in enhanced oil recovery at the Ahvaz Faculty of Petroleum.
Digital Rocks is a data portal for fast storage and retrieval, sharing, organization and analysis of images of varied porous micro-structures. It can be used in the fields of petroleum, civil and environmental engineering and geology.
The delegation members have reportedly conducted specialized discussion on the development of Gachsaran Oilfield with Iranian officials.
According to Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, oil production from the southern regions stands at 3 million barrels per day, of which 620,000 bpd are produced in Gachsaran Oilfield in the southwestern Kohgilouyeh-Boyerahmad Province.
"Should aging facilities be rehabilitated, oil output can rise, which will consequently translate into higher oil revenues," Zanganeh added.
Iran holds some 700 billion barrels of oil with a recovery factor of nearly 25%. Recovery factor is the ratio of technically and economically recoverable reserves to the total amount of oil in a reservoir.
Reportedly, a 1% increase in recovery rate translates into 7 billion barrels of crude oil.
