Installation work on the first wellhead jacket of South Pars Gas Field Phase 11 in the Persian Gulf started Thursday.
The jacket of Platform B of Phase 11, which was hauled from Qeshm Island on April 30, reached its destination 135 km off Asalouyeh coast, and the installation process is expected to take about three weeks.
When the jacket is installed, drilling in 5 offshore wells will begin, the Oil Ministry news agency Shana reported.
The jacket weighs 2,200 tons and the first well of the phase is planned to come online next year.
This is the first of two jackets of Phase 11, which will allow drilling 12 wells close to the Iran-Qatar sea border in the Persian Gulf.
Phase 11 is the only one among the total 24 phases of the giant South Pars field, which has been delayed.
When fully operational, the phase will produce 56.6 million cubic meters of gas per day plus 75,000 barrels of gas condensate. Gas will be transferred to onshore refineries in Asalouyeh and Kangan in Bushehr Province.
At the ceremony to inaugurate the jacket installation, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said the National Iranian Oil Company had signed a contract for the development of South Pars Phase 11 with an international consortium of France’s Total, China’s CNPCI and Iran’s Petropars n July 2017.
However, the foreign companies pulled out in the wake of the new US economic sanctions on Iran later in 2018.
The consortium reportedly spent $100 million on the project, prior to Total and CNPC’s exit. Petropars is now developing the $4b project.
“South Pars offshore section will be completed in 2021,” the minister said, adding that Iran currently extracts 700 million cubic meters of gas from the field.
Although the sanctions and coronavirus have slowed down the major projects in South Pars, work never was put on hold.
Iran’s tally of confirmed Covid-19 cases surpassed 130,000 on Friday with 7,300 deaths.
Confirmed coronavirus cases in the world have crossed 5.2 million, with death numbers above 335,000.
The giant South Pars field, which Iran shares with Qatar, covers an area of 9,700 square kilometers, 3,700 square kilometers of which are in Iran’s territorial waters. The remaining 6,000 square kilometers in Qatari waters are known as North Dome.
The field is estimated to hold approximately 14 trillion cubic meters of recoverable gas reserves along with 18 billion barrels of recoverable liquefied natural gas reserves in the Iranian waters.
More than $80 billion has been invested in the field since 2001 when the first well was drilled.
South Pars constitutes 96% of liquefied petroleum gas, 100% of ethane and 55% of sulfur produced in Iran. Products (condensates, natural gas and other depravities) worth $270 billion have been extracted from the field in 18 years.
