New Iranian Oil Field Discovered: Report

TEHRAN, Iran — Iranian state TV says the country is exploring a newly discovered oil field believed to contain more than 1 billion barrels of crude oil.

The report quotes Iranian Oil Minister Gholam Hossein Nozari as saying the area holds about 1.1 billion barrels of crude oil. He says about 220 million barrels are "recoverable." He did not elaborate.

The report broadcast on Sunday says the oil field is located near Andimeshk, in the oil-rich province of Khuzestan, located about 290 miles southwest of Tehran.

Iran is the fourth-largest oil producer in the world and ranks second in output among OPEC countries. It controls about 5 percent of the global oil supply.

Comments

[KillTheMessenger]

1.1 billion barrels? Wow. The world's annual consumption of oil is approx. 30 billion barrels. This "giant" oil field will last 13 days. No, wait... only 220 million are recoverable... so that's two and a half days...

NEXT!

[Cathexis]

New oil found in Iran ...

Well, that should answer the question: Will the Bush Adminsistration fidn a pretext for war before they leave office. :-/

[Iheartniki]

A quote from the immortal T. Boone Pickens:

The meek shall inherit the earth, but they ain't gettin the mineral rights.

[Bluebloodsbastardson]

Cheney and Halliburton-KBR are not lusting for Iran's Oil that much, what they want to obtain by invading Iran is a pipeline route to China......

[AnnArky]

Has anyone ever asked why "oil" is underground to begin with? Has anyone considered that oil might just have a purpose in nature and by sucking it all up we're just creating a bigger problem?

[leduck]

no
sometimes it's not underground
sometimes, it seeps to the surface
as in, la brea tar pits

it's purpose in nature was to reproduce, then it died in an oxygen starved nutrient trap
then it was burried under muck
then it turned into source rock (sedimentary)
then it sunk below the oil window (heat and pressure) [crack into oil]
then it flowed up into resevoir rock
then it gets blocket by a trap
then you suck it out of the ground
no problem
nature doesn't care

the bigger problem could be TERMINAL DECLINE
or GLOBAL WARMING
but not sucking it out of the ground

[KillTheMessenger]

It's underground because in order to cook organic materials into liquid hydrocarbons one needs high temperature and high pressure. Both can naturally only be found under hundreds and thousands of feet of rock. Mystery solved.

[PicaPiedra]

Actually AnnArky is right. Bear with me with a little technical explanation, that may sound like an agnostic genesis:

At the beginning 4 billion years ago, the the dominant gas in the air atmosphere were CO2, methane and nitrogen. The advent of photosynthetic life started reducing CO2 into organic carbon molecules necessary for life structure and metabolism and molecular Oxygen, O2 as a by-product.
This revolutionary phenomenon made possible the development of aerobic life of high complexity i.e. us.
The carbon byproducts HAD to be sequestered underground in the form of coal, oil and natural gas, because, if left on the surface in contact with atmospheric oxygen, it tends to revert into its CO2 form in a violently exothermic reaction called "burning".
All of the aerobic biosphere depends on that physical separation between the reduced carbon in the form of fossil fuels and the atmospheric oxygen keeping them from returning to the original state of High CO2 low Oxygen Atmosphere.
And No, the trapping of CO2 by Alkaline minerals in the form of carbonate sedimentary solids does not count as an alternative sink for the CO2 because it traps 2 atoms of oxygen for every atom of carbon.

In summary Yes, there is a "purpose" for the fossil fuel to be underground: An Oxygen rich atmosphere that sustains life like ours. We may capture some useful energy by letting them recombine into CO2, but we do it at our own peril. . .

[leduck]

looks like big0725 left the table
he went back to the baby bottle i guess

einchicago needs to come back too so i can be educated
now that they have discredited peak oil and have now moved on to other posts?
and one of them discredited peak oil with punctuation!

[EinChicago]

Nobody has "discredited" peak oil. It never had any credibility to begin with ;)

And I consider myself a liberal. Just not a tin foil nut.

[KillTheMessenger]

A liberal without a science education should be rare indeed because it is not a very useful creature. It makes for just another breed of ideologist. And that is the last species we need. We need people who argue out of a position of intellectual insight, not one of blind conviction.

[kenbomc]

Bush and McSame are drulling over this. Not as much as their doners are though.

[elpollo]

There is no way that the neocons can "invade" Iran successfully. They can just bomb them. And as Gene WIlder said about Mungo in Blazing Saddles, "Don't shoot him. It'll just make him mad." Wonder what will happen to our 300,000 servicemen and mercenary contractors in Iraq if we bomb Iran? Reminds me of the Athenian expedition in Sicily in 415 BC.

[Podewumun]

Pardon me for saying so, Mr. Imadinnerjacket, but perhaps you should have kept your hole card hidden until February of next year.

[econdr]

A billion barrels is a billion reasons for bush to invade...

[KillTheMessenger]

It's 220 million recoverable barrels. A little difference. The US uses 20 million barrels a day. So that's about 11 days worth of US supply. How long, do you think, would a successful invasion or Iran take, if it were possible, at all?

[Nobrun]

Big mistake. Iran should have kept this a secret. Now there's every reason to attack.

[craneman]

what is their sand doing on top of our oil?

[pbfishtaco]

Any connection between the test of missles in Iran and the addtional oil?
It's in both sides interest to keep the threat of conflict hot, so as to keep the price of oil UP UP UP!

An actual invasion is not in either side's interest; it raises the cost of production. Why have a war, when you can just keep up the rumors of war with the same benefit to the market??

[PierreLeClerke]

You are one of the only persons actually paying attention. Nicely done!

Note: The Persians are some of the most sophisticated negotiators on the planet. If there is money to be made, they are all over it. Any fool that thinks for one second that they are not playing pattycake with big oil / bushco for the benifit of the show is only fooling themselves.
Notice an unbreakable connection here: Every time without exception crude prices finally begin to drop, Iran is either threatened or they threaten something or someone within 48 hours or not beyond the second consecutive day of crude oil dropping. Check the data yourself. It is in your face America,
You've been punked!

[trevorfsj]

No connection at all would be my guess. A few weeks ago Israel and the U.S. conducted military exercises in the Eastern Mediterranean and practiced refuelling bombers over a distance equal to the distance between Israel and Tehran. My guess would be that Iran is flexing it's muscles as a warning to Israel not to attack it's nuclear facilities.

[KillTheMessenger]

No connection. This is a tiny find that to oil people is worth mentioning in three lines on page 18 of a typical trade journal.

[JiminNC]

Dubya's viagra bill will be a little lower next month.

[dumboldfarmer]

This discovery must have some people salivating at the prospect of gaining control of that oil. Dollar signs for dreams, I imagine.

[leduck]

that oil discovery means nothing
it's minor
but, it can still be used i guess, since most people are oil ignorant

[oldpotsmuggler]

The new field in Utah (or provence, as the case may be) was said to have from 5 to 15 billion barrels when it was announced a couple of years ago. It's been kept under pretty close wraps since then, but rgw official numbers say that each wet hole flows around 5,000 barrels per day.

If they can't at least top Utah, they need to act a bit humble.

[KillTheMessenger]

Were said to have? Been kept under wraps? Sounds like conspiracy talk to me.

But it's fabulous that you believe one can save a 20 million barrel/day economy with holes which give 5000 barrels/day. So we need about a thousand of those... keep drilling, boys!

[oldpotsmuggler]

Conspiracy? No, it's the law. For oil, only a limited amount of info is required to be made public, and every producer keeps everything else to themselves until the entire target acerage is leased. The geophysical work on this stuff is priceless. The best anyone not on the inside is ever able to do is gather bits and pieces of info and make the best picture possible out of it.

(You also flunk math. 5,000 times 1,000 is 5,000,000.)