Tehran, July 23: Iran is to launch a domestically-built semi-floatable drilling rig for the Caspian Sea which will immediately begin exploration for oil and gas reserves.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is to participate in the inaugural ceremony of the semisubmersible rig called Iran-Alborz, the largest in the Middle East, says Iranian Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari.
After winning the international tender offered by the National Iranian Oil Company for the construction of the Iran-Alborz platform in 2002, the Sadra Group, with a 95 percent share, kicked off the project in a joint venture with the Swedish company GVA, which held a 5 percent share.
In an interview with Iran’s Petroenergy Information Network (PIN), National Iranian Oil Company’s Managing Director Seyfollah Jashnsaz said Wednesday that “the costs of the project would have exceeded $450 million if it was implemented by foreign companies, while the costs were limited to $80 million with domestic expertise.”
The semi-floatable platform is able to operate at water depths up to 1,030 meters and can drill down to 6,000 meters under the seabed.
The rig weighs 14,000 tons without its attachments and will facilitate oil exploration in the deep waters of the southern areas of the Caspian Sea.
Iran plans to launch the offshore platform in its territorial waters of the Caspian Sea to increase its oil output.
Iran, pumping the fourth greatest amount of petroleum from the planet, has given priority to exploring its northern territorial waters in the Caspian Sea. The sixth largest enclosed body of water on the planet is estimated to have oil reserves of 17 billion to 44 billion barrels.
The maritime and seabed boundaries of the Caspian have yet to be demarcated among Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation, and Turkmenistan, the five nations bordering the Sea.
Southern parts of the Caspian Sea that are Iran’s contain at least 32 billion barrels of oil reserves, estimates show.
—-Agencies