Research Infrastructure
Khodafarin said: "Our most important activity in the first five-year period was to establish research infrastructure at KEPCO, particularly for studying deep waters. Years on, we can say now that we have been through the correct path and we are currently in an acceptable position in Caspian Sea research."
He said that the only allocation for research projects comes from KEPCO's general budget, adding: "Over recent years, significant measures have been taken in the research sector, which has had a good yield."
Khodafarin said that over the Five-year development plan, about 12 projects were envisaged in the environment and engineering sectors. "Despite financial restrictions, we finalized nine projects in collaboration with seven universities and research institutes."
He said deepwater operations were the expertise of KEPCO, adding: "NIOC has century-old experience in operations in southern oil-rich areas, but it is inexperienced in the Caspian Sea deep waters and there has been no serious background before the victory of the Islamic Revolution."
"We referred to universities affiliated with the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology. The Sahand University of Technology has made the largest contribution to KEPCO's research and we have had very effective cooperation," he said.
Khodafarin added: "Moreover, Sharif University of Technology and Isfahan University of Technology were with us. Furthermore, I should say that we have started implementing several other studies."
Latest Research Projects
Khodafarin went on to explain about several important studies in the Fifth Five-year economic development plan, saying: "The project for combating oil pollution in the Caspian Sea was one of the important projects handled by KEPCO Research Division and the Oceanography Research Center. The implementation of this project yielded results that facilitated the modeling of oil pollution spread and studying possible mechanisms of leaks and combating leaks."
He said that the project also helped simulate oil slicks, adding that the project lasted three years "and we are currently in the stage of installing software in the KEPCO base in Behshahr."
He said continued online simulation would depend on national determination, adding that other bodies like the "Department of the Environment" and "Ports and Maritime Organization" (PMO) should step in, so that the project would come to fruition.
Khodafarin said other studies conducted by KEPCO included studying tarball formation in the Caspian Sea coasts through fingerprinting crude oil in neighboring countries.
He said: "From 2009 to 2012, tarballs emerged in the northwestern coasts of the Caspian Sea (something between 15 and 30 tonnes). It posed environmental risk whose roots had to be found out. We realized that there was no oil databank for the Caspian Sea. Therefore, we decided to establish a databank through chemical fingerprinting in cooperation with the Environment Division of Research Institute of Petroleum Industry (RIPI). By completing the databank, we would be able to originate any oil pollution. We applied both quantitative and qualitative methods to gather data on tarballs. This databank was set up for oil samples. By adding more samples we can analyze any pollution."
Asked about the origin of oil pollution, he said further studies showed that the pollution was not related to the Sardar-e-Jangal oil field.
Deepwater Roadmap
Khodafarin also referred to the deep water roadmap research project, saying: "We started this project in cooperation with the Maritime Engineering Department of Sharif University of Technology. We have decided to set up a roadmap for deepwater operations. The Maritime Engineering Department has turned it into a maritime industry roadmap, part of which is related to deepwater roadmap."
He also said that other important measures included designing and developing software for platform stability in cooperation with the Sahand University of Technology with a view to ending dependence on foreign nations and saving the country hard currency.