Azernews.Az

Iran has recently discovered a huge oil field shared with Iraq and a large gas field shared with Turkmenistan, Mehr news agency quoted Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi as saying.

"It is probable that the oilfield also contains natural gas," he noted.

Qasemi went on to say that since the past Iranian calendar year, over 2 billion barrels of in-situ crude oil reserves have been discovered across the country.

On Friday, Central Oilfields Company Managing Director Mehdi Fakour announced that a huge natural gas field has been discovered in northeastern Iran.

"Details of the discovery of new natural gas reserves in the region will be announced by the National Iranian Oil Company," Fakour added.

He went on to say that the exploratory study of the newly discovered gas field will continue until September 2013.

According to BP's annual statistics, Iran's gas production (excluding flared and recycled gas) in 2011 was 153.3 billion cubic meters (some 420 million cubic meters per day), while the consumption volume was 151.8bcm in 2011, indicating a 1.5bcm negative balance.

In December, Iran's deputy oil minister said that Iran's proven crude oil and natural gas reserves are worth around $37 trillion. The reserves include 100 billion barrels of crude oil, 94 billion barrels of condensates, and 207 billion barrels equivalent of natural gas, he explained.

Iran's daily gas output is projected to hit 1.4 billion cubic meters by 2015.

Iran ranks fourth worldwide with 155 billion barrels of recoverable oil reserves, after Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Canada.

With 34 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves, Iran has the world's second-largest natural gas reserves after Russia.