Iran to boost oil storage capacity in Persian Gulf

TEHRAN,June 13(MNA) - Iran will commission three oil storage facilities, with the total capacity of three million barrels, in the Persian Gulf as a bid to deal with the EU sanctions against the Islamic Republic’s oil sector, the Mehr News Agency quoted an official at the Bahregan oil region as saying. Hamidreza Karimi said that two facilities, each with one million barrels capacity, and two other ones, each with 500,000 barrels capacity, will be put into operation by 2013. One of the one-million-barrel facilities was inaugurated in April and the two 500,000-barrel facilities will come on stream by September, he noted. Iran is planning to boost oil output at the Bahregan oil block in the Persian Gulf to by 35,000 barrels per day (bpd) to reach 175,000 bpd by 2015, an official with the Iranian Offshore Oil Company said in January. Roham Qasemi told the Pana news agency that the Bahregan oil block holds around 21.5 billion barrels of crude and 1.5 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Iran has attached the priority on boosting gas production capacity from its joint oilfields with Qatar and Saudi Arabia, Oil Minster Rostam Qasemi said. Iran sits on the world's second largest natural gas reserves after Russia and is trying to grow its gas production by increasing foreign and domestic investments, especially in its South Pars gas field. The field is shared by Iran and Qatar. The Iranian share, which is divided into 29 phases, has about 14 trillion cubic meters of gas, or about eight percent of the total world reserves, and more than 18 billion barrels of liquefied natural gas resources.