A drilling rig at work in Yadavaran oil field, southwest of Iran (file photo)[/caption]Tehran, Jan 7, IRNA Iran has taken lead in developing a joint oil field with Iraq, an official said on Wednesday.
Talking to reporters, development contractor of Yadavaran oil field Hadi Nazarpour said Iran is currently producing 50,000 barrels of crude oil from the field on a daily basis.
However, he added, Iraq is still in drilling stage of its wells and has not entered the production phase yet.
He said the first phase of the field's development project will become operational by the first half of the next Iranian year (to start March 21, 2015).
According to the contractor, the first phase of the project has a capacity of producing 850,000 barrels a day.
He said the initial production operations of the field started in March 2011.
Iran has produced 30 million barrels of crude oil from the oil fields so far, he added.
Nazarpour noted that the development project of Yadavarn oil field has been completely by almost 94 percent now.
He said drilling operations on 55 oil wells in the field have been already completed.
Noting that initial studies had put the field's oil capacity at 17 billion barrels, he said later explorations raised the figure to about 34 billion barrels.
Thus, a third phase of development is anticipated for Yadavaran oil field, the official said.
As for the performance of the Chinese contractor of the oil field, he said it is due to complete the development project in 59 months but has a 15-month delay now.
The Chinese contractor will be fined a certain sum of money for the delay, he said.
Yadavarn Oil field , shared by Iran and Iraq, is located in the southwestern province of Khuzestan.
By IRNA
The Iran Project is not responsible for the content of quoted articles.
