South Pars gas extraction platform 19A, weighing 2,750 tons, was successfully installed with help of domestic contractors late on Saturday in an operation that lasted about two hours.
Pars Oil and Gas Company experts along with Iran Shipbuilding And Offshore Industries Company specialists, managed to install the platform, using Oceanic 5000 crane ship and Abouzar 110 vessel, Shana reported. The platform was loaded from Bandar Abbas and Khorramshahr yards two weeks ago.
“Not long ago, foreign oil giants like Shell and Total played a key role not only in building but also in installing the platforms,” Hamid Rezaeian, managing director of Iran Shipbuilding and Offshore Industries Company, said, noting that relying on experiences gained in recent years, ISOICO experts are capable of constructing highly complex platforms in less than two years unless financial constraints impede their progress. Rezaeian believes that quality-wise, what they manufacture complies with international standards.
Iran is planning to boost gas production capacity from around 430 million cubic meters per day at present to 1 billion cubic meters a day in 2017 and 1.2 bcm/d by 2020. South Pars is the world’s largest gas field, shared between 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, which measures 6,000 square kilometers.
The field has a capacity of producing 820 mcm/d and 1 mcm/d of natural gas and condensates, respectively.
