Azernews.Az

The Iranian Oil Ministry plans to establish a refinery neighboring the Caspian Sea and feed it by crude oil which is derived from the sea, IRNA news agency quoted Masoud Jahdi, the explorations director of Khazar Oil Company as saying, Trend news agency reported.

"Northern provinces are highly populated and are major consumers of oil products. So, building a refinery will meet their needs," he added.

The reserve of the Sardar Jangal oilfield, located in the Caspian Sea, is around 2 billion barrels, of which 500 million barrels is recoverable, Jahdi said.

He added that the field's crude oil has the API degree of 41.

According to the officials of the National Iranian Oil Company, the oilfield is completely situated within Iran's territorial waters in the Caspian Sea and is not shared with any neighboring country.

Iran's Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said previously that Iran has the capacity to produce 4 million barrels of crude and 600 million cubic meters of gas per day, according to Press TV.

Referring to the fact that Iran possesses 12 percent of the world's oil reserves and 18 percent of its gas reserves, Qasemi said that, "The capacity to produce oil must reach 5.2 million barrels and gas production capacity must hit one billion cubic meters per day by 2015."

Iran holds the world's third-largest proven oil reserves and the second-largest natural gas reserves.