To curtail the flaring of natural gas in fields shared with the western Arab neighbor, operations are underway to complete Azar Oilfield's gas installations, located in Anaran Block bordering Iraq in Mehran, lIam Province.
Keyvan Yar-Ahmadi, who oversees the field's development at the Petroleum Engineering and Development Company (PEDEC), made the statement on the sidelines of the 15th Joint Management Committee for Azar Oilfield development, the National Iranian Oil Company's news portal reported on Saturday.
According to the official, permanent gas processing units are expected to be established by March. Moreover, the installation of 130 kilometers of new pipelines to Dehloran Gas Refinery in Ilam Province is about to be completed.
"The processing units will help transfer associated petroleum gases to the delayed Dehloran gas refinery [NGL 3100] project," he said, adding that the refinery will receive 7.6 million cubic meters of APG per day.
NGLs are components of natural gas that are separated from in the form of liquids in gas processing plants through absorption, condensation or other methods.
According to Yar-Ahmadi, plans are in place to develop the jointly-funded gas processing unit, whose development came to a halt due to financial constraints, at an estimated cost of $1.55 billion, which will be invested in two phases.
Commenting on Dehloran refinery's plus point, the official added that the initiative will help cut the flaring of APG in the region that is a major source of pollution, as large amounts of harmful emissions are released in the environment through gas flaring.
"As soon as the plant goes on stream, 1,170 barrels of gas condensates, 2 mcm of sweet gas as well as 3 mcm of sour gas will be produced per day," he said, noting that NGL 3100 will receive its feedstock from Azar Oilfield.
--- Crude Output
Yar-Ahmadi further said production from Azar Oilfield, currently at 30,000 barrels per day, is expected to reach 65,000 bpd in 2019, as plans are underway to drill more wells gradually.
"The committee has granted licenses for new drilling operations in the field," he said.
According to the official, these operations will be undertaken in cooperation with Sarvak Azar Engineering and Development Company and the National Iranian Drilling Company, which have already drilled 17 wells in the region.
"However, Azar is not an easy catch," Noureddine Shahnazi-Zadeh, CEO of PEDEC, said.
The field is a drillers' nightmare, given the sequence of its low- and high-pressure layers and the large number of tubes for drilling and lining of wells.
"The extracted oil will be delivered directly to Dehloran refining units. The field's crude oil API, a measure of how heavy or light petroleum liquids are compared to water, stands at 33, which ranks it among medium-grade crudes," he said.
The PEDEC chief said the project is being implemented under a buyback deal.
"The field is slated to supply 100,000 bpd once fully developed, yet the tall order cannot be fulfilled unless a consortium of foreign and domestic firms provide the financial resources," he said.
Shahnazi-Zadeh believes that Majlis Energy Commission can play a key role in facilitating investment in the country's oil and gas sector.
Azar holds 2.5 billion barrels of in-place oil, but new reservoir studies on the field suggest a much higher figure of 4 billion barrels. It is one of the six joint fields with Iraq, along with Dehloran, West Paydar, Naft-Shahr, Azadegan and Yadavaran.
