Iran’s neighbors are extracting nine times as much oil and gas as Iran from fields that straddle Iran’s borders, the Majlis Research Center has reported.
Every oil minister for the last decade has proclaimed that his priority policy is to exploit shared oil and gas fields. The great fear within the country is that Iran’s neighbors will suck everything useful out of those fields before Iran gets to work on them.
That is one reason Iran has put a major emphasis on developing the South Pars gasfield, which goes under the border with Qatar, where it is known as the North Field, and where exploitation began long before Iran got to work on South Pars.
But the Majlis announcement that Iran’s neighbors have nine times the capacity to extract oil and gas from shared fields is a clear slap at the Oil Ministry for falling far short of its announced goals.
The announcement did not indicate if every country with which Iran’s has shared fields—Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman and the UAE—is outpumping Iran.
It gave figures for three of the six countries:
• The UAE pumps 136,000 barrels day or 2.4 times the 56,000 barrels pumped by Iran.
• Saudi Arabia produces 450,000 barrels a day or more than 10 times Iran’s 42,000.
• Qatar pumps 450,000 barrels a day or 13 times as much as Iran’s 35,000. In addition, Qatar extracts 480 million cubic meters of gas daily from the North Field, while Iran extracts 285 million from South Pars. But Iran has said production at South Pars will reach 480 million by this coming September.
