Iran ranks third in oil, second in gas reserves: OPEC
Iran has the third largest proven oil reserves across the world, new figures by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) show.
According to the data, Iran is in possession of a total of 208,600 billion barrels of oil, which remained unchanged between 2019 and 2022, Press TV reported.
The figure stood at 155,600 billion barrels in 2018, but it surged by 53 billion barrels the following year.
Venezuela and Saudi Arabia had the world’s first and second largest proven oil reserves in 2022, with 303,221 and 267,192 billion barrels, respectively, according to OPEC figures.
OPEC’s proven oil reserves reached 1,243,523 billion barrels in 2022, rising by 0.1 percent when compared to the previous year.
The world’s total oil reserves also stood at 1,564.441 billion barrels at the end of 2022, showing a 1.1 percent increase compared to 2021.
According to the latest report by OPEC, Iran has the second-largest proven gas reserves in the world as its reserves in 2022 was equal to 33.98 trillion cubic meters.
Russia ranks first in the world with 47.75 trillion cubic meters of gas reserves, the OPEC Data indicated also showing that Qatar ranks third with a total gas proven gas reserves of 23.83 trillion cubic meters.
The total gas reserves of the world in 2022 have reached 210.063 trillion cubic meters with an increase of 2.4 percent compared to the previous year.
US (16.396 trillion cubic meters), Turkmenistan (13.95 trillion cubic meters), Saudi Arabia (9.514 trillion cubic meters), the UAE (8.210 trillion cubic meters), Nigeria (5.913 trillion cubic meters), Venezuela (5.511 trillion cubic meters) and Algeria (4.504 trillion cubic meters) stood at the fourth to tenth ranks.
Iran is a founding member of OPEC, an organization enabling the cooperation of leading oil-producing countries in order to collectively influence the global oil market and maximize profits.
The country is banned from international oil trade because of US sanctions, but its oil export revenues jumped by 67 percent, to $42.6 billion in 2022.
It is currently producing some 3.8 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil and more than one billion cubic meters per day of natural gas. Iran has some 10 active oil refineries and 21 natural gas refineries, while it also counts on massive hard currency revenues from its petrochemicals sector.