TEHRAN- Daily production in Iran’s South Pars gas field will reach 630 million cubic meters (mcm) by the end of current Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2018), Shana quoted Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh as saying on Monday.

The minister also referred to production of gas in South Pars as one of the prioritized plans of the Oil Ministry in the current year.

South Pars is part of a huge offshore field, shared with Qatar in the Persian Gulf. The field is estimated to hold about 8 percent of the world’s natural gas reserves.

On Sunday, President Hassan Rouhani inaugurated five development phases of the field, namely 17-21, which will add 150 mcm to the field’s current daily gas output of about 570 mcm to push Iran’s gas extraction from the joint field up to equate that of Qatar.

These phases will also add to Iran’s production and export of gas condensate, LPG, and ethane.

In the inaugural ceremony of the phases, Zanganeh said [development of] South Pars is a perfect symbol of ‘resistance economy’, which stresses minimum reliance on foreign resources in running the country.

Some $71 billion has been already invested for development of South Pars, of which $19 billion has been secured from the internal sources of Oil Ministry and the rest $52 billion from external sources such as National Development Fund (NDF), banks and issuance of securities, according to National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) Managing Director Ali Kardor.

MA/MG