The extraction of oil from these oil resources will become possible with the model designed by the company, the exploration manager of the NIOC said.
With the new exploration activities, more than 2.5 billion barrels of oil were added to the country’s natural gas and crude oil reserves in the previous Iranian calendar year (ended March 19, 2024), Mehdi Fakour stated.
The new oil discoveries will be announced by the oil minister later, he added.
Domestic companies enjoy high potential to extract the oil shale resources, he said, adding that a formulated and indigenized model has been designed in the country that has not yet been implemented in other parts of the world.
The extraction of oil shales in the United States costs about $40 per barrel but the shale oil production in Iran will cost about $25 per barrel using the new model defined in the country, the official added.
Iran is believed to have 158 billion barrels of proven conventional oil reserves, the fourth largest in the world.
Shale oil is an unconventional oil produced from oil shale rock fragments by pyrolysis, hydrogenation, or thermal dissolution.