A senior Iranian lawmaker says all the 28 phases of Iran’s giant offshore South Pars gas field will have become operational by March 2015.
Ruhollah Abbaspour, the spokesman for Iran’s Majlis Industrial and Mining Committee , said on Monday that 10 phases of the gas field are currently operating at full capacity.
The lawmaker said the petrochemical products derived from the gases at South Pars can generate revenues equal to the sale of six million barrels of crude oil.
Abbaspour added that Iran’s gas extraction would equal that of Qatar with the completion of all the phases of South Pars, which lies in a wider gas field shared by the two countries.
Iran’s Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi also said earlier that 775 million cubic meters (mcm) per day of gas could be extracted from South Pars after all its phases come on stream.
Iran is currently producing 300 mcm per day of gas from South Pars. The country, 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.
South Pars is part of a wider gas field that is shared with Qatar. The larger field covers an area of 9,700 square kilometers, 3,700 square kilometers of which are in Iran’s territorial waters (South Pars) in the Persian Gulf. The remaining 6,000 square kilometers, referred to as the North Dome, are in Qatar’s territorial waters.
The Iranian gas field contains 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, November 28, 2012