TEHRAN - The managing director of Petropars Company, which is in charge of developing phase 11 of Iran’s South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf, said his company has conducted nearly 8,000 meters of drilling in this phase despite limitations created by the pandemic.

“The first stage of drilling in this phase which includes drilling four production wells is underway despite the limitations caused by the coronavirus, and sofar 8,000 meters of drilling has been conducted,” Hamid-Reza Masoudi said.

According to the official, the total amount of drilling operations in this phase is 15,000 meters, which means over 53 percent of the total drilling has been completed so far.

Masoudi stressed the need for taking all the necessary measures to start early production from the last phase of the South Pars joint field and added: "The contractors of the pipeline and the platform for the mentioned phase have been determined and the engineering operations will begin at 11B platform after Oil Ministry approval.”

He emphasized that Petropars tries to make maximum use of the capacities and capabilities of domestic companies and the workforce in developing this phase.

The official had earlier said that in order to achieve early production from this phase, drilling operations will be conducted in two stages, saying: “In the first stage, a descriptive well and three production wells will be drilled and completed, and then after the installation of the phase’s platform, eight more wells will be drilled and completed.”

Former Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, on December 14, 2020, ordered the official beginning of the drilling operations for the first well of Phase 11 in the Persian Gulf waters.

In the early production stage, the output of this phase will reach 500 million cubic feet (equivalent to 14 million cubic meters) per day.

In November 2016, Iran signed a $4.8 billion agreement with a consortium including France’s Total, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), and Petropars, a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), on development of phase 11, however Total and CNPCI pulled out of the project in 2019 due to the U.S. sanctions.

Currently, Petropars is developing the phase 11 project after its partners left the contract.

The South Pars phase 11 project will have a production capacity of two billion cubic feet per day or 370, 000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. The produced gas will be fed into Iran's gas network.

South Pars is the world’s largest gas field, covering an area of 3,700 square kilometers of Iran’s territorial waters.

The giant field is estimated to contain a significant amount of natural gas, accounting for about eight percent of the world’s reserves, and approximately 18 billion barrels of condensate. The field is divided into 24 standard phases.

EF/MA