The ministry has finished exploration and certain tests on the new gas field and is expected to unveil official data on it during the Ten Days of Dawn celebrations, Mehr news agency reported on Tuesday.

Between August 2009 to August 2010, Iran also discovered 13 new oil and gas fields with in-place reserves of 14 billion barrels of oil and 45 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Only between March and December of 2010, Iran discovered seven gas fields and more fields are anticipated to be found in the next Iranian calendar year (starting March 21).

The latest discovered gas field was Khayyam field with in-place reserves of 277 billion cubic meters of natural gas in the southeastern port city of Assalouyeh in Hormozgan province.

Iranian oil officials earlier announced that the country's hydrocarbon capacities are also expected to grow due to the modern tactics employed in oil and gas explorations.

Iran is OPEC's second-largest oil producer after Saudi Arabia, and has 150.3 billion barrels of crude oil and 33.1 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, according to the latest official statistics.