Iran makes major oil discovery

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is reported to have announced the discovery of a new oil field with reserves estimated at some 53bn barrels, adding to total Iranian reserves of 150bn barrels.

Commenting on the news, Will Scargill, Managing Analyst, Oil and Gas at GlobalData, says: ‘Limits on investment and exports due to sanctions mean that the exploration successes at the Namavaran field can’t translate into material benefit. Iran already has a large number of projects holding billions of barrels of resources that it cannot fully realise, and this just adds to that list. The headline figure of 53bn barrels also masks a more modest reality. The government has stated that 22bn of this is newly discovered and, due to the challenging nature of the reservoir, only 10% of the total resources are thought to be recoverable.’

According to OPEC’s most recent Monthly Oil Market Report, Iran produced 2.16mn b/d in September 2019, down by 34,000 b/d from the previous month and down from an average of 3.55mn b/d in 2018 and 3.81mn b/d in 2017.