TEHRAN – The managing director of Pars Oil and Gas Company (POGC), which is in charge of developing Iran’s giant South Pars gas field, has said that the development of the mentioned field is nearly completed and all phases of the field will be fully operational in near future.

“This [Iranian calendar] year (ends on March 20), the development of the large gas field will be nearly completed and we will not have any work left except for phase 11 in the offshore sector and the refinery of phase 14 in the onshore sector; which will be operational early next year,” Mohammad Meshkinfam told IRIB on Thursday.

South Pars, which Iran shares with Qatar in the Persian Gulf waters, is currently divided into 24 standard offshore phases, the output of which is processed by 14 gas refineries on land.

According to Meshkinfam, the first train of the South Pars phase 14 Refinery is going to go operational early next Iranian calendar year (begins on March 21), after which every three months another train will be inaugurated, and by the end of the next Iranian calendar year (March 20, 2022) this refinery will be fully operational.

Underlining the reliance of domestic capacities and capabilities for the development of the mentioned field, Meshkinfam noted: "In the beginning, only 33 percent of the required equipment in this field was produced in Iran, but today 75 percent of the necessary equipment has been indigenized."

Initially, the first two projects of the field, namely phase two and three and phase four and five, were carried out with the participation of France’s Total and Italy’s Eni, but after that, the remaining phases were developed by Iranian companies, he explained.

The POGC head further mentioned the construction of the platforms for the development of the mentioned field, saying: “at the beginning of the work we built five offshore platforms abroad, but after that, we designed and built the remaining 35 platforms entirely inside the country.”

Stating that today Iran has reached complete self-sufficiency in all aspects of gas production from South Pars field, Meshkinfam added: “In the fields of drilling, platform building, pipeline construction, and onshore refineries, which are our four main sectors in extracting gas from South Pars field, all equipment and machinery have become indigenized and the operators are also domestic companies.”

South Pars gas field covers an area of 9,700 square kilometers, 3,700 square kilometers of which are in Iran’s territorial waters and the remaining 6,000 square kilometers, called North Dome, are situated in Qatar’s territorial waters.

EF/MA