Forouzan Oilfield in the Persian Gulf is currently producing between 30,000 and 50,000 barrels of oil per day, the managing director of the state-owned Iranian Offshore Oil Company said.
“Although the lion’s share of the oilfield’s reservoir is located in Saudi Arabia’s territorial waters, Iran has started production from Forouzan earlier than the southern neighboring country,” Hamid Bovard was quoted as saying by ISNA on Saturday. Officials say ramping up extraction from joint oil and gas fields is a top priority of the Oil Ministry.
Located 100 km southwest of Kharg Island, Forouzan is one of Iran's two joint oilfields with Saudi Arabia. It was discovered by the Pan American Petroleum and Transport Company in 1966 with estimated in-place reserves of 2.3 billion barrels of crude. Production from the field started in 1987 with 180,000 bpd, but declined to 40,000 bpd in 2000. Iran has 145 hydrocarbon fields, of which 26 are shared with neighbors, including Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Turkmenistan.
Iran's total in-place oil reserves have been estimated to be more than 560 billion barrels, with about 140 billion barrels of recoverable oil. About the present status of the nearby Arash Gas Field, Bovard noted that the field has not been developed as it is not a priority.
The government has placed a higher priority for shared fields with Iraq and Qatar such as the giant South Pars Gas Field and the joint fields in West Karun oil block at the Iran-Iraq border. The official had earlier said that there are territorial disputes over Arash field, which should be settled so as to start activities.
"In a preliminary step to develop Arash Gas Field, the Foreign Ministry has opened dialogue with Kuwaiti and Saudi governments," Karim Zobeidi, the deputy for planning at the National Iranian Oil Company, said last year. Arash field, known as Aldorah in Kuwait, lies southwest of Kharg Island. Geographically, the field is shared between Iran and Kuwait, but Saudi Arabia has laid claim to the resource in recent years, the Oil and Gas Journal reported.
The field was reportedly discovered in 1967 by a Japanese company with Iran's investment. It holds an estimated 28 billion cubic meters of natural gas and also contains crude oil deposits.
