South Azadegan Oilfield Development Project will be financed by Iranian companies and not foreign investments, said Mahmoud Marashi, the executive manager of Development Project.
"So far, we have no plans to incorporate foreign investors and local firms are financing the project," SHANA quoted Marashi as saying.
In 2009, China's CNPCI signed a $2.5 billion buyback deal to develop the field, agreeing to pay 90% of the costs). In parallel with the approval of its revised master development plan, the contract came into effect in mid-August 2012 and work on the project began, but moved at a slow pace.
After President Hassan Rouhani took office in 2013, the government set a 90-day deadline for CNPC to accelerate development of the project. In 2014, Iran terminated the contract after the Chinese company failed to fulfill its obligations.
Following the revocation of the Chinese contract in April of the same year, Iranian companies brought in their drilling rigs to compensate for the holdup of the Chinese over the three-year period. Marashi noted that the project will be completed under a three-year plan to reach its target production rate of 320,000 barrels a day.
"The financial constraints we faced over the past few months did not impede the development process and the project powered ahead steadily," he said.
Located 80 km west of Ahvaz in Khuzestan Province along the Iran-Iraq border and shared by both states, South Azadegan Oilfield is the largest found in Iran in the past few decades.
The development project aims to produce 600,000 barrels of crude oil per day (320,000 barrels in the first phase, which will be increased by 280,000 barrels in the second phase counting early production).
