An Iranian natural gas industry official says the country’s natural gas production from South Pars gas field will hit 800 million cubic meters (cu.m.) per day before the end of 2015, which will exceed the neighboring Qatar’s output from the field.
Managing director of Pars Oil and Gas Company (POGC) Mousa Souri noted on Sunday that at the moment 10 active refinery phases of the gas field located in Asaluyeh in the southern Iranian province of Bushehr are producing 254 million cu.m. of natural gas per day.
He went on to say that Qatar is currently producing 550-560 million cu.m. of gas per day from the field.
The official noted that refineries related to phases 15 and 16 of the field as well as offshore section of phases 17 and 18 will be made operational before the end of the current Iranian calendar year (started March 20, 2012) and gas production will start in phases 17 and 18.
Souri stated that 10 out of 24 phases of the huge gas field have become operational since 2002, with each phase yielding 25 million cu.m. of natural gas, 40,000 barrels of condensate, 200 tons of sulfur and one million tons of liquefied gas per day.
The managing director of POGC added that according to the contractor’s projections, phase 12 of the field, whose output is equal to three ordinary phases of South Pars gas field, will come on stream during the current Iranian calendar year.
Iran, which sits on the world’s second largest natural gas reserves after Russia, has been trying to enhance its gas production by increasing foreign and domestic investments, especially in its South Pars gas field.
The South Pars gas field covers an area of 9,700 square kilometers, 3,700 square kilometers of which are in Iran’s territorial waters in the Persian Gulf. The remaining 6,000 square kilometers, i.e. North Dome, are in Qatar’s territorial waters.
The Iranian gas field has 14 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, about eight percent of the world’s reserves, and more than 18 billion barrels of LNG resources.
[mappress] LNG World News Staff, October 17, 2012