Iran has discovered an oilfield with estimated reserves of 750 million barrels within its southwestern Jofeir oilfield, Oil Minister Gholamhossein Nozari said.

'We have done new drilling in Jofeir and have discovered a new oilfield with an in-place reserve of 750m barrels,' he said on Saturday.

Nozari said with the new discovery Jofeir's output would reach 33,000 barrels per day, from the 25,000 barrels previously reported.

Opec member Iran has in the past put its oil reserves at 138 billion barrels.

Iran, the world's fourth largest crude oil exporter, had signed a $450m contract with Belarus for Minsk to extract 40,000 barrels of oil per day from its Jofeir oilfield.