TEHRAN – The managing director of Iran’s Pars Oil and Gas Company (POGC), which is in charge of developing the country’s giant South Pars gas field, said a new well has gone operational at the field’s phase 11 to increase its production.

“As promised before, to complete the production capacity of phase 11 of South Pars, the drilling of the seventh well (well number 12) at the location of platform 11B of this joint field was completed and the well went into operation last night (Saturday, November 10),” Touraj Dehghani told Shana.

“After the acidification operation is completed in the coming weeks, the gas extraction from this well will reach its full capacity,” he added.

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

Iran had previously awarded the development of the phase 11 project to a consortium comprised of France’s Total, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), and Petropars, a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC). However, Total and CNPCI pulled out of the project in 2019 due to U.S. sanctions.

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

The drilling operation for the first well of the 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 field, which Iran shares with Qatar in the Persian Gulf, 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