TEHRAN, April 30 (UPI) -- The National Iranian Oil Co. said it discovered what a natural gas field in the southern province of Khuzestan as large as the giant South Pars field.
Mahmoud Mohaddes, an exploration director at NIOC, said a giant gas field was discovered in Khuzestan. A 16,000-foot well is to be drilled to provide an estimate of the field's potential, the Mehr News Agency reports.
The report adds that the field could be as large as the South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf, considered one of the largest in the world. The NIOC official didn't indicate a reserve potential of the field in Khuzestan, however.
Meanwhile, NIOC suggested it was looking to explore parts of the Forouzan oil field, an oil field that straddles the maritime border with Saudi Arabia. Mehr indicates that Iranian engineers expected to extract more than 300 million barrels of crude oil from Forouzan in the next 25 years.
Iran has made a series of similar announcements in April. Economic sanctions targeting Iran's energy sector go into effect July 1.
