TEHRAN – Danish conglomerate Maersk Group is in talks with the National Iranian Oil Company for development of South Pars gas field’s oil layer in the Persian Gulf.

“We hope that negotiations with the Danish company will be finalized by the yearend (March 2018),” Gholam-Reza Manouchehri, the NIOC deputy managing director told ISNA on Wednesday.

Maersk has already signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with NIOC to study the oil layer and the company has presented the results to NIOC.

The development of the South Pars oil layer will be awarded under a 20-year contract. The project is estimated to cost about $6 billion and the field’s final output will be 120,000 barrels per day.

According to the official, NIOC has so far received 26 plans from the companies studying Iranian oil and gas fields, most of which are international companies.

“Denmark’s Maersk, Germany’s Wintershall, Austria's OMV, Indonesia’s Pertamina and some Japanese and South Korean companies are among the contractors which handed in results of their studies,” Manouchehri noted.

Iran exported the first cargo of crude oil to the tune of 700,000 barrels from the South Pars oil layer in May 2017.

According to Hamid Bovard, the managing director of Iranian Offshore Oil Company (IOOC), currently 25,000 barrels of crude is being extracted from the South Pars oil layer on a daily basis.

EF/MG