TEHRAN – Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh on Monday ordered the official beginning of the drilling operations for the first well of Phase 11 of Iran’s giant South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf waters, Shana reported.

As reported, an offshore drilling rig, belonging to Mapna Drilling Company, was settled at the mentioned phase’s SPD-11B platform on November 6.

The mentioned drilling rig is going to dig 12 descriptive-development wells in the mentioned phase for extracting about one billion cubic feet of gas per day.

In the first phase, by drilling and completing five wells and installing the SPD-11B platform, the initial production capacity of this phase will reach 500 million cubic feet (equivalent to 14 million cubic meters) per day.

Later on, by drilling and completing seven other wells, parallel with the initial production, the total rich gas recovery from the platform will increase to one billion cubic feet (equivalent to 28 million cubic meters) per day.

Engineering and technical monitoring and supervision of all the mentioned operations will be carried out by Iranian experts and engineers.

Iran won’t need permission to raise oil output

Speaking in a ceremony held for the beginning of the drilling operations in South Pars Phase 11, Zanganeh emphasized that Iran is able to export 2.3 million barrels of oil on a daily basis, saying: "Increasing oil production is Iran's right and we don’t need anyone’s permission to do so."

“If sanctions are removed and the necessary resources are provided to rehabilitate some of our older wells whose production has been reduced, the exports of 2.3 million barrels of oil per day can be achieved,” he said.

Development of the South Pars phase 11 was officially started in May after several years of hiatus due to various financial and technical issues.

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 2 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

Photo: Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh speaks in a ceremony held for the beginning of the drilling operations in South Pars Phase 11.