Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani has announced the discovery of a new oil field in the southwestern Khuzestan province, which he said Sunday contains an estimated 53 billion barrels of crude oil.
“This is in a big oil field that stretches 2,400 sq km from Bostan to Omidiyeh. The oil layer has a depth of 80m (262ft),” Rouhani said, making the announcement during a speech in the central Iranian city of Yazd.
“I am telling the White House that in the days when you sanctioned the sale of Iranian oil, the country’s workers and engineers were able to discover 53 billion barrels of oil,” he said, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.
At present, Iran says it possesses some 150 billion barrels of proven crude oil reserves. If the new discovery proves accurate, it would boost Iran’s crude oil reserves by a third and become the country’s second largest oil field after that which contains 65 billion barrels in Ahvaz, according to The Associated Press.
US Warns Iran on Ballistic Missile Threat, UNSCR Violations
Iran has trouble selling its oil abroad, however, due to severe sanctions imposed by the United States in response to its violations of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal signed with world powers, and the violations of United Nations resolutions (2216 and 2231) prohibiting Iran from carrying out weapons’ transfers and continuing its ballistic missile program.
Among its most recent violations was Iran’s announcement earlier this year of plans to launch three space launch vehicles (SLV), “which incorporate technology that is virtually identical to that used in ballistic missiles, including in intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs),” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pointed out in a statement in January 2019. The action violated UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which calls upon the Iranian regime not to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons.
Iran has test-fired ballistic missiles capable of carrying multiple warheads, routine and nuclear-armed, according to Israeli sources, more than once.
