Gas production from the giant South Pars Gas Field’s Phase 11 will start this year, the managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company said.
“Last autumn, we decided to drill four wells in Phase 11 and the operations have now been completed and undersea pipelines have also been installed. So we expect gas extraction to begin soon,” the Oil Ministry’s news service also quoted Mohsen Khojastehmehr as saying.
Like other standard phases, the development of South Pars Phase 11 is aimed at producing 56 million cubic meters per day of gas, he added, noting that the project needs an investment of $5.7 billion.
Phase 11 is the only one among the 24 phases of the joint field in the Persian Gulf, which has not been developed yet. Iran shares the field with Qatar.
The Phase 11 development project included the construction and installation of the jackets and topsides of the phase, drilling wells and laying 115-km-long 32-inch pipelines to transfer mono-ethylene glycol and liquefied natural gas to onshore plants for processing.
About 15,000 meters of drilling operations to dig four production wells have been carried out and an estimated 14 million cubic meters of natural gas per day will be extracted from the phase initially.
When it becomes fully operational, the phase will also produce 75,000 barrels of gas condensate, which will be transferred to refineries in Asalouyeh and Kangan in Bushehr Province.
Last Year’s Achievements
Elaborating on significant measures taken last year (ended March 20, 2023) to develop the gas industry, Khojastehmehr noted that the completion of a project in phases 2 and 3 of South Pars helped sweeten 80,000 barrels of gas condensates per day for export.
“The construction of Phase 14 refinery was carried out by eight domestic contractors. The main equipment, including compressors and boilers, in the refinery have been built by local manufacturers,” he said.
“Two units of Be’sat Combined Cycle Power Plant, each with a 160-megawatt capacity, came on stream, which not only meets the need of the field, but also supplies its surplus electricity to the national power grid.”
Referring to the beginning of the drilling operations at Belal Gas Field, a joint field in South Pars, the official said that when the project is over, 14 million cubic meters of gas will be produced on a daily basis at the field.
The extracted sour gas will be transferred to the offshore platform of Phase 12 of South Pars and after processing will be piped to the phase’s onshore refinery via an undersea pipeline.
Belal Gas Field straddles the maritime boundary between Iran and Qatar in the Persian Gulf. It is located east of the giant South Pars, 90 km southwest of Lavan Island. The field is estimated to hold 170 billion cubic meters of gas in reserve and its proven gas condensate in place is more than 100 million barrels.
Khojastehmehr also pointed to a contract signed to develop the first phase of developing Kish Gas Field, adding that the project is aimed at bringing the field on stream in 14 months.
Pars Oil and Gas Company, a subsidiary of NIOC, has signed a $900 million contract with the domestic company Iranian Offshore Engineering and Construction Company to develop Kish Gas Field, the second largest in the Persian Gulf after South Pars.
The project entails laying a 32-inch 200-kilometer subsea pipeline from Kish Island in Hormozgan Province to onshore refineries in Asalouyeh in Bushehr Province. Fourteen wells will be drilled on the site of the project.
As the world's fifth biggest offshore gas field, the Kish reserves were discovered in 2006 and is believed to hold an estimated 1.7 trillion cubic meters of natural gas in situ, of which 1.4 tcm are recoverable. It also contains more than 500 million barrels of gas condensates.
Located 30 km east of Lavan Island, the giant gas field's development plan includes three phases and upon the completion of the last phase, close to 120 mcm/d of gas can be extracted from the field.
