Iran's energy sector review

Despite a huge rise in Iran’s oil exports, the pace of output growth seems to be much less than that of exports. In the meantime, the main part of oil output is expected to come from old fields rather than the new ones. According to the latest statistics released by the International Energy Agency and Reuters surveys, Iran increased oil export to about 1.55 million barrels per day (mb/d) in March 2016 from the 2015 average export level of 1.1 mb/d. But the country’s total oil output rose by less than 300,000 b/d in February 2016 according to an OPEC monthly report released in mid-March. Earlier, Iran said it would increase oil exports by one billion barrels per day. The additional barrels are to come from the existing production capacity, which was shut down during the sanctions era. On March 30, the head of the International Energy Agency Fatih Birol announced that Iran is expected to add half a million barrels of oil supply a day within one year from its existing oil field

While Qatar is producing some 23 percent of the global helium demand from the North Dome gas field (called South Pars in Iran), the Islamic Republic has no plan to extract helium from this joint field. Currently Qatar is producing over 40 million cubic meters of helium per year (mcm/y) by operating two plants in South Pars, the third plant is projected to be built in coming years. Helium is not expensive and its price is about $2.5-$4 per cubic meter, but the restricted amount of global helium reserves and unique industrial usage, make it very important. Annual global production of helium is about 175 million cubic meters per year and it is estimated that the earth's precious helium resources will run out within 25 to 30 years. Currently, the US with 73 million cubic meters of production per day is leading the main producers, including Russia, Qatar and Algeria. Total helium reserves in the US stand at 20.6 billion cubic meters, according to the US Geologic Survey. Russi