TEHRAN – Managing Director of Iran’s Petropars Company, which is in charge of developing Phase 11 of the giant South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf, has said the company is going to take all the necessary measures to complete the first part of the mentioned phase’s development project by the third quarter of the next Iranian calendar year (starts on September 23).

As Shana reported, Seyed Shamsedin Mousavi made the remarks on Sunday, in a ceremony held for his introduction as the new head of the company.

The ceremony was attended by Head of National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) Mohsen Khojasteh-Mehr.

Speaking at the ceremony, Khojasteh-Mehr said: “National Iranian Oil Company trusts Petropars and we have very high expectations from this company and hope that they will be able to implement all projects, especially priority ones as scheduled.”

“Phase 11 of South Pars and South Azadegan [development projects] are among the priorities of the National Iranian Oil Company and even a day delay in the implementation of these projects will not be accepted,” Khojasteh-Mehr stressed.

Earlier this month, Petropars’ former Head Hamidreza Masoudi had announced the implementation of two new contracts which would accelerate the development of the mentioned phase.

According to Masoudi, the mentioned deals were concerned with the construction of an off-shore pipeline as well as the installation of the phase’s SDP11B platform.

“The engineering, procurement and implementation activities corresponding to these two contracts have officially started since the beginning of the current [Iranian calendar] month [December 22, 2021]),” Masoudi said.

When fully developed, 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.

Iran had previously awarded the development of phase 11 project to a consortium comprised of France’s Total, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), and Petropars which is a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), 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 drilling operation for the first well of mentioned phase was officially started in December 2020. In the early production stage, the output of this phase will reach 500 million cubic feet (equivalent to 14 million cubic meters) per day.

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: NIOC Head Mohsen Khojasteh-Mehr (L) and Petropars’ new Head Seyed Shamsedin Mousavi