"It took the Norwegian company Norsk Hydro ASA almost two years to drill the first well. NIDC has carried out operations on six wells in less than two years and work on the last one will end soon," Hossein Rahimi was quoted as saying by Shana on Wednesday.
On completion of the seventh well, the joint field's output, currently at 30,000 barrels per day, will gradually increase to 65,000 bpd.
"However, Azar is not an easy catch due to low- and high-pressure layers," Financial Tribune quoted him as saying.
The Oil Ministry assigned Iran's Petroleum Engineering and Development Company in 2010 to drill 16 wells in Azar Oilfield. After the Norwegian contractor failed to get the job done, PEDEC commissioned NIDC and the Global Petro Tech Kish Company to drill the remaining 15 wells.
"Six wells have already gone on stream with the help of NIDC's Fath-35, Fath-37 and Fath-60 rigs on the basis of turnkey projects."
Reportedly, the deepest well in the field has been drilled at a depth of 5000 meters by Global Petro Tech Kish Company in cooperation with Sarvak Azar Engineering and Development Company.
The extracted oil will go directly to Dehloran refining units. The field's crude oil API, a measure of how heavy or light petroleum liquids are compared to water, stands at 33, which ranks it among medium grade crudes.
Azar holds 2.5 billion barrels of in-place oil, but new reservoir studies suggest it holds 4 billion barrels. It is one of the six joint fields with Iraq, along with Dehloran, West Paydar, Naft-Shahr, Azadegan and Yadavaran.
Iran shares a spate of oil and gas reservoirs with neighboring countries, including several oil deposits with Iraq that shares over 1,400km of border with Iran to the west.