Iran’s hope to double oil recovery rate
During the last decade one of Iran’s priorities was enhancing the recovery rate of oil fields, which has stood at about 20 percent. Iran’s proved crude oil reserves stands at about 800 billion barrels, while based on the current recovery rate, Iran can only extract 157.8 billion of that. According to the last two National Development Plans (2005 to 2015) Iran should have increased the oil recovery rate by 2 percent, but the plan remained on paper only. Recently, the Managing Director of The Iranian Offshore Oil Company Saeed Hafezi said that the oil recovery rate on fields under the control of this company varies from 0.3 percent in Resalat field to 20 percent in Hengam field. He said that the fields operated by this company also lose 10 percent to 12 percent of their productivity annually. Iran has not been able to commence any new major oil field since 2007, while about 80 percent of the country’s oil fields are in their second half-life, losing 8 to 14 percent of their producti