 Exploration director at National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), Mahmoud Mohaddes, says some oil shale deposits have been identified in west of the country in Ghali Koh region in an effort to identify unconventional hydrocarbon resources in the country.
Speaking to Shana, Mohaddes said: Currently there are oil shale resources in some countries such as Venezuela, Canada and the United states which their extraction is costly adding the oil extracted from oil shale is heavier than what is known as heavy oil and could be extracted just through mining.
Mohaddes continued: Some countries lack huge oil and gas reserves therefore extraction oil and gas from shale is economical for them but regarding existence of abundance oil and gas reserves in our country, extracting of oil and gas from shale oil and shale gas is not economical.
Even though development shale oil and shale gas deposits is costly but these days their extraction is economical due to high prices of oil but if oil prices fall development of these projects wont be economical, the official said.
Referring to signing a contract with Oil Institute of Tehran University on studying shale oil deposits, Mohaddes said: In Iran it is for the first time that a study is being conducted on shale oil and that is why we should try to use all scientific and academic potentials for conducting such studies.
By conducting a study on shale oil and shale gas, we plan to identify potential deposits in our country, Mohaddes said.
NIOC’s director for exploration also reported of conducting a study on identification of unconventional resources of gas hydrates adding Oman Sea is the best location for identification of these reserves.
Based on remarks made by an official at Research Institute of Petroleum Industry (RIPI) two appraisal wells have been drilled in Oman Sea which has raised the hope for discovering gas hydrate deposits in south of Sistan-Baluchestan province in Oman Sea.
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