TEHRAN- National Iranian Drilling Company (NIDC) dug and completed digging operation of nine oil and gas wells during the first month of the current Iranian calendar year (March 21-April 20), according to the deputy managing director of the company for digging operation.

Ahmad Tamadon said the drilled wells consisted of one development well, one appraisal well, and seven workover wells.

According to the Head of NIDC’s Special Operations Department Ali Daqayeqi, some 654 meters of core extraction drilling was also conducted in the mentioned period which was a huge achievement for assessing the condition of the country’s oil and gas reserves.

Referring to the indigenization of the necessary equipment and machinery for directional and horizontal drilling operations in the country, Daqayeqi said: “With the acquisition of the necessary technical and engineering knowledge, a number of basic parts and equipment for horizontal and directional drilling and core extraction are currently under construction inside the country.”

“This has been achieved as a result of synergy between the company’s specialists, scientific and research centers, and knowledge-based companies,” he said.

Referring to NIDC’s capabilities and capacities in various sectors including technical equipment, as well as specialized and experienced workforce, the official said: “NIDC’s Special Operations Department is fully prepared to respond in a timely manner to the requests of the applicant companies, and several such requests for cooperation have been received from domestic oil companies since the beginning of this year which are on the agenda.”

After the re-imposition of U.S. sanctions against Iran, indigenizing the know-how for the manufacturing of the parts and equipment applied in different industrial sectors is one of the major strategies that the Islamic Republic has been strongly following up to reach self-reliance and nullify the sanctions.

Oil, gas, and petrochemical industries have had outstanding performances in this due, with indigenizing the knowledge for manufacturing many parts and equipment that were previously imported.

Among different sectors of the mentioned industries, drilling could be mentioned as a prominent example in this regard.

NIDC managed to indigenize the knowledge for manufacturing 6,000 drilling equipment in collaboration with domestic manufacturers and engineers in the Iranian calendar year 1398 (ended on March 19).

Before this success, the technology for manufacturing the mentioned equipment was in the possession of a handful of foreign companies.

The equipment indigenized by NIDC includes drilling mud pumps, blowout preventers, traction motors, draw-works, drilling fluid recycling systems, mission centrifugal pumps, top drives, and drilling rig slow circulation rate pressure systems.

The company has also managed to indigenize the know-how for manufacturing 242 parts that are highly used in the drilling industry during the first half of the previous Iranian calendar year (March 20-September 21, 2020).

In order to indigenize the technology to manufacture these parts, NIDC inked six research deals with domestic universities and knowledge-based companies.

MA/MA