Iran aims to boost oil output capacity by 160,000 bpd

Iran aims to boost its crude oil production capacity by 160,000 barrels per day following the completion of expansion projects at its North Azadegan and Yadavaran oilfields, a senior Iranian oil official was quoted as saying.

The two oilfields are both operational and ready to be officially inaugurated after the Feb. 26 parliamentary elections, Abdolreza Haji-Hosseinnejad was cited as saying by Iran's oil ministry news agency Shana on Saturday.

Haji-Hosseinnejad is head of Iran's Petroleum Engineering and Development Company (PEDEC).

North Azadegan can produce 75,000 bpd and Yadavaran 85,000 bpd, he said. The gas section of Yadavaran oil field is waiting for LNG facilities to become productive, he added.

China's Sinopec and China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) started developing the two fields, both located in south-western Iran, but Iran completed the work due to international sanctions on Tehran, the official said.

Iran terminated CNPC contract to develop the Azadegan oilfield in 2014 after the Chinese energy giant ignored repeated appeals to continue working on it.

Yadavaran has reserves of 31 billion barrels of light and heavy crude oil while North Azadegan has a 5.7 billion barrels of crude reserves.

Iran also expects crude production at its North Yaran oil field to reach 30,000 bpd by March 2017, the end of the next Iranian year, while South Azadegan will reach a production capacity of 60,000 bpd around the same date, Haji-Hosseinnejad said, according to Shana.

(Reporting by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Sami Aboudi and Catherine Evans)