TEHRAN (Shana) - Iran says it is gearing up efforts including study of its oil reserves to ramp up the country’s crude oil production, a senior Iranian oil official says.
Addressing a conference here in Tehran on Wednesday, Gholamreza Manouchehri, deputy for development and engineering at the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), said plans are under way to study all the country’s oil and gas reserves with a direct order by Iranian Minister of Petroleum Bijan Zangeneh.
He said consultation of domestic and international advisors in this regard would lead to a leap in developing the country’s oil industry.
The official said that natural gas enjoys a 70% share in the country’s energy mix, adding Iran has planned massive investments in oil industry.
He said enhancing production rate of brownfields is a priority for the industry in this regard.
"Studies by foreign companies indicate that Iran can ramp up its crude oil output by 3 million barrels a day,” the NIOC executive added.
"We expect foreign companies to provide us with finances and technologies in a short periods of time.”

Oil Exports Register 8-Month Rise

Meanwhile, market figures show Iran’s exports of crude oil have reached the highest level since February.
Figures show that Iran shipped 2.28 million barrels a day (mb/d) of crude oil to international markets in September.
The rise came as Iran – together with Iraq that exported 3.98 mb/d last month – took advantage of production cuts implemented by Saudi Arabia.  Lower exports by the Saudis provided an opportunity to the two neighbors to win buyers in key markets like China and the U.S.
Saudi Arabia’s exports were 6.68 million barrels a day, the second-lowest for this year, Bloomberg added.
While Iraq took over the Saudis in exports to the U.S and India, Iran outpaced the strongest forces inside the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) over exports to Asian heavyweight China.
The kingdom is expected to fall further behind Iran and Iraq in November as its state oil giant – the Saudi Arabian Oil Company, or Aramco as it is internationally known, is scheduled to make the deepest cuts in supplies to customers in its history in November, as officially announced by Riyadh.     
The difference between China’s imports of Saudi oil and Iranian crude is at an eight-year low, according to customs data from the East Asian country.
Saudi Arabia shipped 833,000 barrels of crude a day to China in September, compared with 600,000 barrels a day from Iran, Bloomberg said.
OPEC’s third-largest producer has ramped up output and doubled exports since sanctions on its energy industry were eased in January 2016.