OREANDA-NEWS. May 01, 2013. In the sidelines of the 18th International Oil, Gas, Refinery and Petrochemical Exhibition and in the second day of this big event, Hormoz Ghalavand, the managing director of NIOC's exploration management said during a news conference that Iran currently possesses 154 billion barrels of oil available.

He stated that the exploration department has planned to explore 400 million barrels of oil and 125 billion cubic meter of gas with around 5500 billion Rials budget.

Expressing hope towards reaching the goals, Ghalavand also talked about two and three dimensional seismic operations which are planned to be carried out in the current year in the range of 1200 and 750 kilometers respectively.

Ghalavand mentioned that exploration operation has been quite successful so far in such a way that every single attempt has led to the exploration of oil.

In 2012, Iran possessed the second seat regarding exploration operations as OPEC reported. And according to the organization official reports, Iran reached the third place due to increase in the exploration capacity after Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.