Iran has made a major new oil find containing estimated reserves of more than 38 billion barrels, a senior oil official was quoted as saying today.
The general director of Iran's Oil Development and Engineering Company said the find, combining three neighbouring oilfields, had been discovered close to the southern port city of Bushehr.
He said preliminary studies indicated that the Ferdows field contained 30.6 billion barrels, the Mound field billion and the Zagheh field 1.3 billion - making it one of the world's biggest undeveloped fields.
But the crude is of high density, making it less valuable on world markets than most of Iran's 90 billion barrels of proven reserves.
Commercially recoverable reserves are certain to prove much less than the 38 billion barrels in place, but the find could still rival the world's two other leading undeveloped fields.
Kazakhstan's Kashagan field is estimated to hold 38 billion barrels of which seven billion to nine billion are thought commercially recoverable.
Iran's Azadegan, discovered four years ago, holds about 26 billion barrels with recoverable reserves of nine billion.
Hoping to boost its oil production capacity to five million barrels per day (bpd) by 2005 from four million bpd, Iran has placed greater emphasis in recent years on exploration and attracting foreign investment.