On October 13, 2019, Reza Dehghan, director of development and engineering affairs at the National Iranian Oil Company, told reporters that the country had discovered a natural gas deposit in the Eram reservoir in the southern province of Fars. The development of the Eram gas field will start in two or three years and the gas is set to be used for domestic consumption as well as for Eram itself to prevent a decline in pressure. Eram also holds as much as 385 million barrels of condensates, whose value could be as much as $40 billion.