Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh has said that development works for a major section of the sprawling South Pars gas field keep flowing despite the fact that global energy giants have abandoned the project under pressure from the United States.
Zanganeh said on Saturday that Iran’s Petropars was going on with plans for development of phase 11 of South Pars, the largest gas field in the world located in the Persian Gulf, after France’s Total and China’s CNPC withdrew from the project for good.
CNPC had a major share in South Pars phase 11 development scheme, based on a agreement signed in July 2017 that also involved France’s Total and Petro Pars. Total pulled out of the project last year to comply with unilateral American sanctions imposed on Iran. The CNPC had also suspended its investment which could reach more than $2.5 billion.
“Now with the withdrawal of the two companies from the deal, Petropars has fully replaced them and development for first unit of the phase 11 of South Pars has been devolved to this company,” Zanganeh told the Iranian parliament’s ICANA news agency.
Petropars, a company owned by the Iranian Oil Ministry, had a 20-percent stake in the 2017 contract signed for development of phase 11, the largest and most important phase at South Pars.
The company became the dominant investor in the project after Total and CNPC decided to pull out last year due to a new round of unilateral American sanctions on Iran’s energy sector.
Zangeneh dismissed reports that work had stalled at phase 11 of South Pars, an offshore field shared with Qatar, saying Petropars was negotiating deals on platform jackets and procurement of basic tools needed for drilling the wells.
The minister, however, said that development work by Petropars would be limited to the first unit of the phase 11 at South Pars.
“Currently, with regards to technology and designing, the development of the second unit of this gas field by Petropars is not possible” said Zangeneh.
An estimated 14 trillion cubic meters of gas, or more than a third of the total reserves at South Pars, the world’s largest gas field shared between Iran and Qatar, lies in the Iranian territorial waters in the Persian Gulf.
Iran has said that its production from the field would exceed 750 million cubic meters a day until March 2020 to outperform that of Qatar for a first time.