The National Iranian Oil Company has defined several development projects to attract domestic and foreign investments to oil and gas sectors, deputy for development and engineering at NIOC said.
The current projects include increasing pressure in the operational phases of South Pars Gas Field and drilling 35 new wells in the field with an investment of $3.2 billion as well as development of Farzad B, South Azadegan and Bilal fields with an investment of $1.8 billion, $1.5 billion and $440 million respectively, Reza Dehqan was also quoted as saying by the Oil Ministry’s news Agency Shana.
He added that it is essential to implement these projects so that in the next 10 years, the field does not experience a drop in pressure.
Digging new wells and installing offshore compressor stations are the only long-term viable options to control pressure reduction that will start from 2025. If the issue is not addressed, it will reduce gas production to as low as 400 million cubic meters in 2032, down 100% compared to the present levels.
Close to 350 wells in SP are acidized and perforated regularly to keep production as high as possible, but this cannot continue for long and the drilling of new wells is inevitable.
Output from the giant field is now 700 million cubic meters per day and will reach 1.2 billion cubic meters per day by 2024, but if new wells are not drilled in the field, a downtrend in production will begin.
According to estimates, production is expected to decline by 28 mcm per day, or 10 bcm per year, as of 2025.
South Pars accounts for 80% of Iran’s gas need and the decline in output will create insurmountable problems for households, industries and thermal power stations.
Development of Three Fields
Located in the Persian Gulf, Farzad B Gas Field is shared with Saudi Arabia. The development project seeks to raise natural gas output to 28 million cubic meters per day by 2026 from the present 5 mcm/d.
Sour gas from the field will be transferred to Kangan Petro Refining Company in Bushehr Province to be processed and piped to refineries in the South Pars complex in Asalouyeh to be injected into the national grid.
Unlike natural gas reserves in the giant South Pars Gas Field that are rich in condensates — an ultra-light oil — which can be converted into value-added commodities, gas from Farzad B will either be processed and pumped into pipelines, or be converted into LNG.
Farzad B is estimated to hold more than 500 billion cubic meters of in-place reserves, of which 370 billion are recoverable.
The development of South Azadegan Oilfield in Khuzestan Province seeks to increase crude oil production capacity of the field to 320,000 barrels per day from the current 140,000 bpd.
Located 100 km west of Ahvaz, South Azadegan is estimated to hold 27 billion barrels of oil in place, of which 1.7 billion barrels are extractable. It is part of the West Karoun oil block in Khuzestan.
Belal Oilfield near Lavan Island in Hormozgan Province off the Persian Gulf was discovered in 2002.
Initially the field had a production capacity of 40,000 barrels of crude oil per day, which has gradually declined and the development projects aims at raising its output.
According to Dehqan, the NIOC has also other plans for future including raising natural gas extraction from Kish Field with an investment of $2.3 billion and developing Farzad A, Salman and Lavan fields at $2 billion, $2.5 billion and $200 million respectively.
“Investment opportunities in gas fields have been offered to various petrochemical companies. In case of their investment on the projects, their gas supply will be guaranteed for 20 years,” he added.
Despite the US sanctions, Iran has continued development projects in oil, gas and petrochemical industries.
Former US president, Donald Trump, unilaterally withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal, signed between Iran and six world powers, in May 2018.
The hostile US administration re-imposed sanctions on Iran, targeting its key economic sectors, namely oil, banking and shipping industries.
Based on the latest reports, Iranian crude output is over 2.4 million bpd now and the country is set to boost the capacity to 4 million bpd soon, returning to levels before the sanctions hit the country.
