Due to technical problems in the pipeline that transfers crude oil from Goureh Oil Terminal in Bushehr Province to Jask Port in Hormozgan Province, oil export from the National Iranian Oil Company’s Jask terminal off the Sea of Oman will be postponed, the oil minister said.
“The pilot phase of a project to transfer 300,000 barrels of crude oil a day from Goureh Oil Terminal to Jask Port has failed due to some technical hitches,” Javad Owji was also quoted as saying by the Oil Ministry’s news service.
Although 1,000 km of oil pipeline and pumping stations are in place and the project was supposed to officially come on stream soon, it will not become operational before March 2023, he added.
“Work on the $1.1 billion Goureh-Jask pipeline was started in June 2020 and completed in mid-2021.”
An undertaking of domestic engineers, the initiative had to be undertaken in the shortest possible time, because of which some technical issues were not handled precisely and they are being addressed.
NIOC decided to build a sister facility for the main Kharg Oil Terminal after the Strait of Hormuz shipping chokepoint became the focus of military tensions between Iran and the US, and several tankers were hit by mines or in other attacks.
Attacks on vessels in the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the shipping lane that carries about a fifth of the world’s oil, have raised concerns about how disruptive a conflict in the Persian Gulf could be for the global oil trade.
The US blamed Iran for the June 12, 2019, attacks on two oil tankers at the entry point to the Persian Gulf despite Tehran’s denials. On July 19, 2019, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had captured a British-flagged oil tanker in the Persian Gulf after Britain seized an Iranian vessel on July 4.
Tensions spiked between Tehran and Washington after Iran downed a US military drone that it said was flying over one of its southern provinces bordering the Persian Gulf. Washington said the drone was shot down over international waters.
The United States said on July 18, 2019, that a US navy ship had destroyed an Iranian drone in the Strait of Hormuz after the aircraft threatened the vessel, but Iran said it had no information about losing a drone.
The Goureh facility receives heavy oil from the south and southwestern regions and transfers it to Kharg terminal.
Domestic Firms
According to Touraj Dehqani Zanganeh, managing director of the Petroleum Engineering and Development Company, a subsidiary of NIOC, the pipes were produced by three domestic firms, namely Ahvaz Industrial Pipe Company, Isfahan-based Mobarakeh Steel Company and Khuzestan Oxin Steel Company.
Raw material for producing the pipes was supplied by the giant Mobarakeh Steel Company, which was converted to special steel sheets at Oxin Company. The pipes were manufactured in Ahvaz.
Referring to pumps, Owji said the large BB3 multistage centrifugal pumps used in the project were indigenized by domestic manufacturers, namely Iran Industrial Pumps Company and Heavy Duty Pumps and Water Turbine Manufacture Company.
To supply power to the pumps, 200 km of transmission and distribution lines were built and 11 substations are needed, of which six are in place. The venture also includes the construction of 20 oil storage facilities, five pumping stations and an oil export terminal that is operational.
Kharg in the Persian Gulf has been Iran’s main oil export terminal for decades and Jask will be a major addition, with the advantage that oil tankers will not have to pass through the narrow and permanently clogged Strait of Hormuz.
As the new US administration is expected to lift the economic sanctions for easing the pressure on the oil market, Iran is confident it can restore its pre-sanctions oil market share.
"In the past three years, lack of investment stalled many projects but we moved forward," Amirhossein Zamaninia, former deputy oil minister for international affairs, said.
NIOC has been ramping up production over the past few months, following the change of guard in Washington and the gradual recovery of global oil markets from the devastating impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
Based on OPEC data, Iran’s average crude output in the first quarter of 2021 was near 2.2 million barrels per day, marking a 197,000-bpd rise compared with the last quarter of 2020.
