Iran to sail out South Pars platform 20

Iranian Pars Oil and Gas Company has said the South Pars platform 20 would be loaded for transport in the Khorramshahr yard in Iran on Monday, October 24.

The company said on Saturday that the platform was 98 percent done and that it would be loaded and transported on Monday to the giant South Pars gas field located between Iran and the State of Qatar in the Persian Gulf.

The South Pars field is one of the country’s main energy resources. It covers an area of 9700 square kilometers, 3700 of which belong to Iran. Iran’s portion is estimated to have some 14 trillion cubic meters of gas reserves and some 18 billion barrels of gas condensates. This is roughly 7.5 % of the world gas reserves and around half of Iran’s gas reserves.

Alireza Ebadi, the development’s project engineer, said that platform 20 is the second of the two platforms in Phases 20&21 of South Pars and that it was constructed and installed by domestic specialists.

Platform 21 of South Pars weighing 2,700 tons was installed back in August. The operating procedures on the platform have continued after installation and, according to Ebadi, would be concluded by mid-November.

The inauguration of the South Pars gas field’s refinery for Phases 20&21 was back in March of this year when the first train was launched and the Phases’ flare was lit up using gas from Phases 6 to 8.

According to what the supervisor of Phases 20&21 said, platform 20 would produce and transport around 1 million cubic feet (mcf) of gas from the South Pars field to the onshore refinery dedicated to these phases.

“With the utilization of 20 & 21 platforms, 57 million cubic meters of gas would be extracted from the offshore part of these two phases,” Pars Oil and Gas Company said.

The overall cost of Phases 20&21, both the onshore refinery and offshore platforms, sums up to $4.5 billion.

Projects for the development of the South Pars field have been separated into 24 phases with a production goal of 790 million cubic meters of gas per day.