With the 25-year deal with China now moving ahead at pace, Iran has a buyer for all of the crude oil it can produce, albeit at discounted levels , so Tehran is pushing oil field development across the board. This includes not only the major fields in the huge West Karoun cluster – across which China has pledged to increase collective output by at least 500,000 barrels per day (bpd) within the next two years – but also the more challenging fields that nonetheless are rich in oil, especially those that are shared with Iraq. In order to meet these challenges, Iran is resuscitating a program of engaging top domestic universities to work on the scientific challenges of increasing recovery rates, in addition to utilizing human, technological, and financial resources from China and Russia as and when required, with the Azar field being a test-case for such co-operation. Located […]