Pergas Consortium, a group of international oil and gas companies, signed a heads of agreement (HOA) on Wednesday with the National Iranian South Oil Company on developing Karanj Oilfield in Khuzestan Province.
The agreement was signed in the presence of Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, NISOC’s head Bijan Alipour, Pergas managing director Colin Rowley and UK ambassador in Tehran Rob Macaire, SHANA reported.
Should the two sides reach a final deal, which will largely abide by the Iran Petroleum Contract—the new model of Iran's oil and gas contracts, the field's output will increase back up to 200,000 barrels per day.
The overall plan envisages extraction of 655 million barrels from the reservoir within a 10-year period.
Direct and indirect costs of the plan are estimated to stand in the ballparks of $1.167 billion and $187 million respectively.
The cooperation involves boosting wells' pressure, establishing compressor stations, construction of facilities to harness and transfer the associated petroleum gas (APG) with the capacity of 280 million cubic meters per day, establishment of desalting units to process 100,000 bpd of crude, drilling 35 new wells, and upgrading 15 other wells.
Karanj was discovered in 1963 and holds an estimated 9.6 billion barrels of in-place oil. It was producing 200,000 bpd of nearly 34 degrees API crude at its peak, but is seriously depleted.
NISOC signed a non-disclosure agreement with Pergas in 2016, based on which the latter was tasked with conducting studies on the field located 40 kilometers southeast of the namesake city.
The consortium is made up of 15 international oil and gas companies, including Norway's AGR, OiLSERV, an oilfield services provider, the UK's Looby, an engineering consultancy, Philippine state oil company PNOC and Sharif University of Technology.
