TEHRAN – The 8th Refinery of Iran’s South Pars gas field produced over 10 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas in the first seven months of the current Iranian calendar year (March 20-October 21), the refinery’s operator announced.

Referring to the recording of the best performance in production and safety among all the refineries of the South Pars complex, Kambiz Sefati said: "engineers and employees of this refinery were able to take a big step toward the realization of the “surge in production” motto by the production of 10.66 billion cubic meters of gas since the beginning of the year and 77,760 man-hours of work without accidents.”

Last year, the 8th refinery had also announced that the amount of associated petroleum gas flaring in this refinery was reduced nearly to zero.

According to the refinery’s managing director, optimization of sulfur recovery and ethane cracker units in the refinery helped cut the flaring of associated gases significantly in this refinery.

With the new developments in the country’s South Pars gas field, which Iran shares with Qatar in the Persian Gulf, and the increase in the gas production from this field, the Oil Ministry has been taking serious measures for the development of the country’s gas refineries to process the extracted gas.

In line with the mentioned programs, this year, the daily processing capacity of Iranian gas refineries is planned to increase 10 percent by the inauguration of new processing units or upgrading the already existing ones.

South Pars Gas Complex is comprised of 14 gas refineries in Southern Iran that are currently processing the gas extracted from the giant South Pars gas field.

The mentioned gas field is expanded over an area of 9,700 square kilometers, 3,700 square kilometers of which, called South Pars, are in Iran’s territorial waters. The remaining 6,000 square kilometers, called North Dome, are situated in Qatar’s territorial waters.

The field, currently divided into 24 standard phases on the Iranian side, 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.

All the offshore operations of the development project of the field, except for phase 11, were completed in the past Iranian calendar year (ended on March 19).

EF/MA