Addressing a ceremony to sign a contract for completing the development of South Azadegan Oilfield on Monday, Karbasian said underlined the promising results of technological studies of the University of Tehran in Azadegan oil field, said: "Following this trend and with the signing of new contracts, technological studies of 12 oil and gas fields will be assigned to five universities."

"With the signing of these contracts, it can be claimed that there is no large hydrocarbon field in the country for which an agreement has not been signed with prestigious local universities and scientific centers,” the official said.

He also noted signing of technological study contracts for 9 oil fields with eight local universities and research centers under the previous Rouhani administration, with a total value of roughly IRR 2,920 billion and €19 million.

The Deputy Minister of Petroleum, stating that the contract for the development of the South Azadegan field had been signed at this stage with the aim of increasing the field’s production capacity to 320,000 barrels per day, continued: “Production capacity of the field will reach 600,000 b/d in the further stages of its development; hence, contractual negotiations will continue with Iranian exploration and production companies in this regard.”

Azadegan field is the largest joint oil field in Iran with 33 billion barrels of oil-in-place. Most of the oil reserves in the field, i.e. 27 billion barrels, are located in South Azadegan, the NIOC CEO said.

It is worth mentioning that the West Karun Exploitation and Desalination Unit and the Skid Mounted Processing Unit are the current capacities for Azadegan oil refining. The CTEP is being built to add to the field’s processing capacity.

Thus, the total value of the contracts signed today between PEDEC and Petropars is $1,261 million and IRR 11,830 billion.

The contracts will complete development of the joint field with 206 wells and 320,000 barrels/day of crude oil as well as 200 million cubic feet of gas per day.

The development of the South Azadegan joint field, which is located in the West Karun region, near the Iraqi border and about 80 km west of Ahvaz, began in 2014 when the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) signed a deal with a Chinese company. However after foot-dragging and failure of the Chinese firm to complete the project, NIOC expelled the company.

Today, the field’s production capacity has reached 140,000 b/d which was only 45,000 b/d back in 2013.

So far over 171 wells had been spudded in the field besides construction of 2 separators, 257 km of flow pipelines, 90 km of transmission pipelines and 23 km of communication pipelines.