Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept. 8
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Austria has expressed readiness to help Iran increase its oilfields recovery rate, Amir Hossein Zamaninia, the Islamic Republic's deputy oil minister said.
He made the remarks while commenting on the topics negotiated during the meeting of Iran 's Oil Minister, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh with Rainer Seele, managing director of the Austrian energy company OMV.
The company has expressed readiness to double recovery rate of Iran 's oil and gas fields, using modern technologies, Zamaninia said, the Iranian oil ministry's official SHANA news agency reported Sept. 8.
The two parties negotiated on implementing enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and improved oil recovery (IOR) techniques in the Iranian fields, he added.
The oil recovery factor in Iran is very low. Iran is able to extract just 20 percent (157 billion barrels) of its oil reserves on average. The current active fields lose about 8 to 13 percent of production volume.
Tehran is producing about 2.8 million barrels of crude oil per day of which some 1.7 million barrels is consumed domestically.
It should be noted that Iran 's oil industry is familiar to the OMV. In April 2007, OMV signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the National Iranian Oil Company that envisaged OMV participating in Phase 12 of the South Pars gas field and in a plant that would liquefy the field's gas for export in LNG tankers. However, the project stalled following pressure from the US and European governments on Iran 's nuclear program.
Back in August, the company's managing director Rainer Seele said Iran is a big opportunity for OMV, but added currently the conditions for potential investors are not sufficient for the company to enter into investment commitments. He also said that OMV was not interested in Iranian gas projects, due to a lack of infrastructure.
Edited by CN
Follow the author on Twitter: @UmidNiayesh
