An official at the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) says according to the latest estimate, the total volume of the country’s hydrocarbon reserves has increased by one billion barrels due to new discoveries. Karim Zobeidi, NIOC’s deputy managing director for consolidated planning, told Iranian Oil Ministrys official SHANA news agency on Sunday that according to the latest estimate, the volume of Irans total hydrocarbon reserves, including crude oil and gas condensate, has increased by one billion barrels during last Iranian calendar year (ended March 20, 2015) compared to a year before. Zobeidi’s remarks came after Irans deputy oil minister and managing director of the National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC), Roknoddin Javadi, recently told Mehr news agency that Iran has discovered new reserves of crude oil and natural gas across the country. He added that new figures on the country’s recoverable oil and gas reserves will be announced by oil minister in the new future. Meanwhile, Salbali Karimi, managing director of the Iranian Central Oil Fields Company, confirmed in an interview with Iranian media that new crude oil and natural gas reserves have been found in central oil-rich regions of Iran. The London-based British Petroleum (BP) released a report last year describing Iran as the country possessing the world’s biggest natural gas reserves by the end of 2013. According to BP’s report, total volume of Irans natural gas reserves has increased by 200 billion cubic meters to hit 33.8 trillion cubic meters (tcm), exceeding by 2.5 tcm the natural gas reserves of Russia, which is currently the world’s top exporter of natural gas. Iran was followed in terms of natural gas reserves by Russia (31.3 tcm), Qatar and Turkmenistan (17.5 tcm each), and the United States (9.3 tcm). The British Petroleum also said in its latest report that Irans crude oil reserves stand at 157 billion barrels, adding that the country ranks fourth in the world by having 9.3 percent of the world’s total oil reserves and accounting for 19.4 percent of the Middle East’s crude oil reserves.