TEHRAN - Iran has discovered a huge in-situ oil reserve of over 8.8 billion barrels in Soussangerd oilfield, Khuzestan province, Oil Minister Gholam-Hossein Nozari announced here on Monday.

""This is the largest oil reserve found in the country in the past five years,"" Nozari said, ""development of the field can boost the country's crude oil production capacity to a great extent,"" he added, the Mehr news agency reported.
Considering that the field is located in the vicinity of some currently producing oilfields, its development will be feasible and its early production is likely to happen in the near future, Nozari said.
Iran has the world's third-largest oil reserves, behind Saudi Arabia and Canada. It recently added that its reserves had grown to 138 billion barrels from 90 billion barrels, thanks to reserves discovered over the last three years. 
Iran, OPEC's second largest oil producer, plans to open some of its oil and gas fields to foreign investment to help boost output by 2015 to 5.3 million barrels per day, from the current 4.2 million barrels per day