South Pars Phase 1 Gas Rig Overhauled

Overhaul of the South Pars Phase 1 gas rig has been completed by domestic engineers said an official at Pars Oil and Gas Company who oversees Phase 1 production.

“The platform, which is the largest among those operated by Pars Oil and Gas Company (POGC), has undergone an extensive overhaul that took 10 days to complete,” Mehdi Rajabi was quoted as saying by the official news portal of the National Iranian Oil Company.  In addition to gas extraction, the rig also links several other platforms and helps transfer gas to onshore facilities.

South Pars Gas Field comprises 24 phases.

“POGC teams and other domestic contractors carry out repair and maintenance work on all South Pars rigs,” he noted.

"The overhaul (of the platform) was critical and also complicated," Rajabi said, adding that reconditioning the platforms ensures their safety as well as production efficiency.

POGC is planned to overhaul three platforms of Phase 12, South Pars’ biggest phase in terms of investment and scope of operation. South Pars is the world’s largest gas field in the Persian Gulf 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.

Iran wants to raise natural gas production to 1.1 billion cubic meters per day in the present fiscal year that ends in March 2018. The country reportedly produces more than 880 million cubic meters of gas daily, around two-thirds from South Pars.