South Yaran Oilfield to Start Production by March

Production from South Yaran Oilfield near the Iraqi border is set to begin by March – the end of the fiscal Iranian year.

"We will start production from South Yaran at 10,000 barrels per day by the yearend," said Homayoun Kazemeyni, head of the field's development plan at Iran's Petroleum Engineering and Development Company (PEDEC), Shana reported.

According to reports, Iran's crude output capacity from joint fields with Iraq is 300,000 barrel per day at present.

"A total of 18 wells have been drilled at the oilfield and operations are underway to start extraction from 15 wells," the official said.

Yaran oilfield, divided into the north and south sections, adjoins Iraq's Majnoon oilfield at the Iran-Iraq border. It has an estimated 2 billion barrels of oil in place. According to reports, PEDEC was assigned to develop South Yaran in 2013.

Production from Majnoon averaged 206,000 barrels per day in 2015 and the volume will reportedly reach 400,000 barrels a day in the near future.

Yaran is one of the several joint fields in the West Karun region, an oil exploration block in Khuzestan Province with an estimated 65 billion barrels of oil reserves. The block includes several deposits, including the giant Azadegan and Yadavaran fields.

PEDEC revised its initial production target for South Yaran from 60,000 bpd to 25,000 barrels per day after conducting further studies on the field's deposits last year.

Iran has prioritized the development of its joint fields after the lifting of sanctions in January 2015. But according to Kazemeyni, a lack of data on the field's geological survey and recoverable reserves as well as funding constraints have slowed the development of South Yaran project.

The government of President Hassan Rouhani is pressing ahead with plans to raise crude extraction from West Karun oilfields. According to published reports, crude extraction from West Karun region has increased to 300,000 barrels per day from around 65,000 bpd in mid-2013, the end of the second and last term of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president.

In November, Rouhani officially launched three oil development projects near the border with Iraq, namely the first development phases of Yadavaran, North Azadegan and North Yaran projects.

Iran has set a production target of 85,000 barrel-per-day for Yadavaran's first development phase, but output from the shared field beat the target to reach 115,000 bpd. The North Azadegan and North Yaran oilfields have met their respective output targets of 75,000 bpd and 30,000 barrels a day.

Officials say Iran is currently drawing crude from the block at an unacceptable extraction rate of 5-6%, but plans call for raising the recovery rate to 25% by implementing advanced recovery methods.