The National Iranian Drilling Company is accelerating operations to complete the drilling of wells at four joint oil and gas fields in the south and southeast of the country with the help of Iranian skilled workforce, a deputy director of NIDC said.
Mehran Makvandi added that NIDC's operations include drillings in Phase 14 of South Pars Gas Field, Azadegan and South Yaran Oilfields in Khuzestan Province as well as Azar in Ilam Province, which have totally registered a work-in-progress rate of 71%, Shana reported.
According to the official, NIDC was tasked with drilling 40 wells in South Azadegan Oilfield in September, 2014 and the project has made 77% progress. Furthermore, the initiative is being implemented ahead of schedule and it will finish by the end of the current Iranian year (started March 20).
South Azadegan Oilfield is located 80 km west of Ahvaz in Khuzestan Province along the Iran-Iraq border and shared by the two states.
It was one of the projects introduced to foreign contractors in a major conference last year, but the future of the project is shrouded in doubt, as it is not clear whether Tehran plans to hand over South Azadegan to Total or put it out to tender sometime this year.
Pointing to Azar Oilfield's complex structure, he said, "Operations to drill seven wells in the field, which commenced in 2013, has made 65% progress."
Highlighting the completion of 13 wells in South Yaran Oilfield, located in West Karun, Makvandi added that the whole project has registered a work-in-progress rate of 82%.
"Pars Oil and Gas Company assigned NIDC to drill 22 wells in Phase 14 of South Pars Gas Field. The plan is being developed with 61% work in progress," he said.
According to Makvandi, 16 heavy and extra heavy duty drilling rigs have been settled in joint oilfields, 14 of which are onshore and two are offshore rigs.
Turnkey Contracts
Stressing that the said projects are being carried out on turnkey basis, the official said based on a contract between NIDC and Arvandan Oil and Gas Company, nine repair wells and three developmental wells in Darkhovein and Sohrab oilfields are set to be drilled, because of which in addition to Fath-48 rig, NIDC's Fath-54 drilling rig is being used in the field.
"Drilling operations on 13 onshore wells of Kish Gas Field have progressed by 70%," he added, noting that NIDC has already drilled an exploratory well at a depth of 2,900 km in Soufikom region in Aqqala County in Golestan Province, ordered by Khazar Exploration and Production Company.
NIDC is concentrating on South Pars, which is pivotal to the government of President Hassan Rouhani’s economic plans. The company is working to deploy two offshore platforms of Phase 14 in less than a year from now.
Phase 14 is not among the high-priority phases of South Pars.
According to Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, all South Pars phases are expected to become operational by August 2017, except Phase 14.
South Pars is the world’s largest gas field shared by Iran and Qatar, covering an area of 3,700 square kilometers of Iran’s territorial waters in the Persian Gulf. It adjoins Qatar’s North Field that measures 6,000 square kilometers. The Islamic Republic has vowed to boost gas production from around 400 million cubic meters per day at present to more than 1 billion cubic meters a day in two years and boost output to 1.2 bcm/d by 2020.
