Iran claimed on Sunday, October 13, that it has discovered a natural gas deposit, 200 kilometers (approximately 124 miles) south of the city of Shiraz.
The field named as Eram, holds as much as nineteen trillion cubic feet of the fuel, thirteen trillion of it recoverable, the director of development and engineering affairs at the National Iranian Oil Company, Reza Dehqan (Dehghan), told reporters at the oil ministry in Tehran.
Furthermore, the new field also holds as much as 385 million barrels of condensates or a type of very light oil, Dehqan said, adding that the value of the resource could be as high as $40 billion.
The Islamic Republic authorities have repeatedly claimed to have discovered oil and natural gas reservoirs on land and offshore in recent years.
On October 9, the state-run Mehr news agency (MNA), reported that Iran had made an "important offshore gas discovery" in its southern region, according to a report on Wednesday.
The offshore field was discovered 3,900 meters deep under the ground, and it is said to be capable of production for 16 years of gas consumption in capital Tehran, the exploration manager at the National Iranian Oil Company, Saleh Hendi said, adding, "the field was discovered after one year of constant exploration in southern parts of Iran."
Nevertheless, none of the international data verify Tehran’s claims.
Based on OPEC's data Iran's proven crude oil reserves amount to 155.6 billion barrels and 33,899 billion cubic meters (1,200 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas.
OPEC's data show that Iran's proven crude oil and natural gas reserves have not changed since 2017. BP's data verifies OPEC's.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration has also estimated Iran's proven gas reserves as of 2016 to be 1,201 trillion cubic feet, rendering it second in the world.
However, Iran produced nearly 260 billion cubic meters of condensates and 1.5 billion barrels of crude oil last year, showing that it either has discovered a similar amount of new reservoirs or stabilized the reservoirs discovered in the past.
To stabilize the precise volume of a new oil and natural gas reservoir, one needs to excavate several wells, but Iran said that it had excavated only one well in the so-called Eram field.
Iran and Qatar share the world's largest natural gas deposit, South Pars and North Field in the Persian Gulf. Thanks to the shared field, Qatar has become the world's largest liquid natural gas exporter, while Iran has mostly used its part of the fields for domestic use.
Since the establishment of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Iran's oil production has steadily declined due to inadequate domestic and foreign investments and technological upgrades.
