South Pars Crude Output at 1.6m Barrels

Over 1.6 million barrels of crude oil has been extracted from the South Pars Gas Field’s oil layer in the Persian Gulf in the past three months, managing director of Petroiran Development Company said.

Roham Ghasemi told IRNA on Thursday that the third crude oil cargo from South Pars, amounting to 500,000 barrels, is ready for shipment to foreign markets.

"Daily production from the South Pars oil layer has reached 25,000 barrels on average,"

According to the official, early estimates show that production can reach 80,000 barrels and 150,000 barrels per day under the second and third development phases of the oil layer.

Ghasemi added that Danish conglomerate Maersk Group contributed to developing the first phase of the South Pars oil layer. The Copenhagen-based giant is in negotiations to undertake the next phase of the project.

Maersk currently produces oil from the Danish and UK sections of the North Sea, Qatar, Algeria and Kazakhstan. It supports global oil and gas production by providing modern drilling services to oil companies worldwide.

“Maersk’s operational capacity and knowhow to drill horizontal oil wells as deep as 10,000 meters is key to its success in developing the South Pars oil layer,” Ghasemi said.

Iran began to draw crude oil from South Pars in March using a floating production storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel. The FPSO was reportedly built in Singapore and cost $300 million.

The South Pars oil layer is located 130 kilometers off Iran's coast in the Persian Gulf with an estimated 7 billion barrels of oil in place.

Iran is pushing for higher crude output from the joint South Pars Gas Field with Qatar.

The small Arab neighbor, which started extracting oil from the field in 1991, has already drilled more than 300 wells with the help of international oil giants. It has reportedly extracted more than 1 billion barrels of crude from the joint field during the last 25 years.