TEHRAN, April 21:Iran has discovered a total of 3.6 billion barrels of in-place oil reserves in the past 3-4 months in the country's south, the official IRNA news agency quoted the head of the state oil company as saying on Saturday.

Gholamhossein Nozari, managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), said this included a new oilfield called Paranj with in-place reserves of 1.6 billion barrels of light oil. Of this amount, he suggested up to 650 million barrels were recoverable reserves.

Besides exploring the Paranj oilfield ... exploration of another oilfield near (the already existing) Abtimour oilfield with in-place oil reserves of two billion barrels has already been announced, he said.

Mahmoud Mohaddes, NIOC head of exploration, said he believed Paranj could yield 60,000-70,000 barrels per day in a few years' time. I guess in less than 2-3 years it can be put into operation. Iran is Opec's second largest producer but analysts have said it is in danger of slipping down the table of exporters as output stagnates because of lack of investment blamed on US sanctions and political interference.

Earlier this week, Nozari said Iran's oil output was currently around 4 million barrels per day and that capacity stood at 4.26 million bpd but that it planned to boost crude output capacity to 5.3 million bpd by 2015.

— Reuters