Iran has made some $25 billion of investments in the development of South Pars Field in southern Iran, according to Managing Director of Pars Oil and Gas Company Mohammad Meshkinfam.
Meshkinfam made the remarks speaking on the sidelines of a ceremony where national projects of the Ministry of Petroleum in South Pars Field were inaugurated in southern province of Bushehr on Sunday.
He said that more than $10 billion of the total $25 billion allocated to the development of South Pars Field during President Hassan Rouhani’s two four-year terms were invested in offshore facilities.
Production and excavation from the field has amounted to some 700 mcm/d, the official said, adding that the figure shows a 2.5-fold growth compared with the 280 mcm daily production eight years ago.
Meshkinfam said that some 1.3 trillion cubic meters of gas has been excavated from the giant field over the past eight years.
He noted that the field’s last year production (223 billion cubic meters) accounted for 70% of the country’s total gas production.
The official said that 26 platforms out of the total 37 platforms operating in South Pars Field have been installed during the past eight years when President Rouhani has been in office.
17 platforms of the field have the capacity of excavating some 28 mcm/d of gas while the rest 20 platforms are operating with an excavation capacity of 14 mcm/d, Meshkinfam said.
A total of 3,200 km of pipelines has been laid under the seabed to carry gas from the offshore platforms to the onshore refineries, he said, noting that more than 67% of the pipelines (2,160 km) has been laid during the past eight years.
Shared between Iran and Qatar, the South Pars-North Dome Gas-Condensate field is by the far the largest natural gas filed in the world.
The Iranian side of the reserve contains an estimated 14 tcm of gas and 18 billion barrels of condensates. It spreads across an area of 3,700 square kilometers in the Persian Gulf which accounts for nearly a third of the entire structure both in terms of size and the recoverable content.
Major oil and gas companies like France’s Total and China’s CNPC left South Pars under pressure from the US, leaving Iran on its own to develop major phases of the field.