South Pars Phase 21 Comes on Stream

Iran has started gas production from Phase 21 of the South Pars Gas Field, the director of phases 20 and 21 said in a statement.

“We are drawing 28 million cubic meters of gas per day from Phase 21 and total production from South Pars has increased to 515 million cubic meters per day,” Alireza Ebadi was quoted as saying by Shana.

South Pars is a giant gas field in the Persian Gulf. It is the world's largest gas field shared by Iran and Qatar.

Ebadi added that output from Phase 21 will be largely injected into the national gas grid for domestic consumption.

Officials say production from South Pars will rise to 540 million cubic meters a day by March 2017, the end of the current fiscal year.

The refinery of phases 20 and 21 currently consists of two gas sweetening units, each capable of processing 14 million cubic meters of sour gas per day. Plans call for adding two more gas processing units by next February in line with plans to launch South Pars Phase 20.

The two phases are also planned to produce 77,000 barrels of gas condensates per day, 1 million tons of liquefied gas per annum, 400 tons of sulfur annually as well as a million tons of ethane.

South Pars mega project is being developed in 24 phases. Reportedly, Iran's neighboring state Qatar has extracted more than 177 billion cubic meters from the field during the last three years, drawing the lion's share of the underground reserves.