[pup55]

Update from Safehaven via LATOC:

Iran Exports

Daily production is coming in at 3.9 according to the above article.

The decline is not as gloomy as the original 2005 article, luckily, which suggested that 400-500 thousand barrel per day decline might be in order.

Bakhtiari now feels that the global peak has occurred.

[DantesPeak]

Petrologistics stated last Wednesday that OPEC supply will be down about 200,000 bpd in April, mostly due to Saudi Arabia and Iran. This suggests that Iran is having trouble keeping production even at prior OPEC quota levels.

[pea-jay]

Both Iran and Iraq's curves are not really reflective of geological factors. Politcs and war drove those totals, so unlike other areas I think both countries could offer more, again assuming the non-geological constraints are removed.

[rockdoc123]

Been away for awhile but thought I would point those interested in Iran production/reserves to a very recent paper:

Al-Husseini, M.I., 2007, Iran's crude oil reserves and production, GeoArabia, Vol. 12, #2, pp. 69-94.

this is an outstanding piece of research that puts together reserves and production numbers on a field by field basis for all of the Iranian production.

A few quotes:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n contrast to 1974 when Iran's production peaked at 6.0 MB/d, production in 2005 averaged about 4.1 Mb/d. The 1974 peak occurred when production from most of the giant fields was ramped-up to very high but unsustainable levels. Current plans are to increase the crude oil production rate to 4.6 Mb/d by 2009. This is a significant challenge because this production capacity has to offset a reported total annual decline rate of 300 - 500,000 barrel/day. This high decline rate is attributed to the maturity of the giant fields, many of which attained their peaks in the 1970's and have produced about half or more of their estimated ultimate recoverable reserves. Therefore to achieve the 2009 production target within the next three years, Iran has to add about 680 Kb/d of capacity per year from its developed fields (infill drilling, recompletions, enhanced and improved oil recovery), while also adding net new surface facilities and well capacity from undeveloped fields and reservoirs.

[pup55]

Thanks for this post, Rockdoc.

I guess based on this, there is some hope that they will be able to contribute another million barrels per day at some point.

Did the writer suggest how long they could maintain the 5.5 mbpd?

Anyway, this is quite helpful in understanding the remaining reserves issue.

[rockdoc123]

I think the writer (who has Campbell as a colleague) is a bit sceptical of the numbers MEES offers up. For a number of the fields they suggest that production can be maintained via reserve growth. I will look in more detail at all of the numbers as I get a chance. Recovery factors are currently all over the place with various zones in fields such as Azadegan ranging from 12.3% (Gurpi Fm) to 28.2% (Gadvan Fm) with the majority of reserves in the 18% recovery range (Sarvak Fm). Also there seems to be a wide range in current recovery factors in similar lithologies. As an example the Asmari limestone in Ahwaz has 64.2% recovery whereas the Asmari at Agha Jari only has 15% recovery.
This is one paper that brings together all the data though. It should be possible to get some sense of what potential reserve growth might be reasonable for the various pools on a strictly statistical basis (take the range in recoveries for a given reservoir across all of the fields and fit a lognormal distribution to it). From that one might be able to come up with a probablistic approach to what production numbers might be in the future. I'll have a go when I get some free time.

[pup55]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '1')2.3%

[rockdoc123]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')y Caramba! I think this is close to the hydrocarbon percent in the
Athabasca oil sands. They'd almost be better off trying to mine it.

We forum dwellers will wait to hear from you.

[Taskforce_Unity]

issue 2 of volume 12 is not yet available online, what a bummer.