Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb.21
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:
Iran will restart drilling at its northwestern Moghan oil field, the Mehr News Agency quoted Iranian MP Habib Boroumand as saying on Feb. 21.
Four exploratory wells will be drilled at the oilfield in the near future, he added.
In May 2013, Croatian oil and gas firm INA decided to withdraw from the project, due to "problems related to foreign currency exchange," Mehr news has reported. INA signed a $141m deal in April 2008 with the National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC) to discover new hydrocarbon reserves at the Moghan oilfield.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration released its latest Short-Term Energy Outlook on Jan. 7. The report has presented some statistics about Iran's oil output in the previous year.
Based on the report, it's estimated that Iran produced 2.8 million barrels of oil per day (excluding gas condensates) in 2013, which is 170,000 barrels less than the preceding year.
The report also puts Iran's estimated unplanned crude oil production outages in the second half of 2012 at 800,000 barrels per day.
In other words, Iran cut the mentioned amount from its regular production by shutting down the wells in some oilfields. So, the country produced 2,970 million barrels of oil per day in 2012, while it had the capacity to produce 3,770 million barrels.
EIA's report also shows that Iran produced 2.8 million barrels of oil per day in 2013, while the amount of estimated unplanned crude oil production outages was 600,000 barrels per day.
So the country's total production capacity in the end of 2013 was around 3.4 million barrels per day, which is 370,000 barrels per day less than 2012.
