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9.2 Major corporate news 9.2.1 Oil & gas corporate news
Iran installs final South Pars Phase 14 gas field production equipment
Iran's South Pars output could hit 680 mcm/d with new platforms operational
Iranian oil and gas firms have successfully installed the final equipment required for South Pars Phase 14 gas field production. The 2,400-tonne Platform 14D has been erected, according to oil ministry-owned energy news agency SHANA.
The entirety of South Pars in the Persian Gulf is thought to make up the largest gas field in the world. Shared by Iran and Qatar, its development, in Iranian waters, has been hampered by US sanctions that in August 2018 put an end to French energy major Total’s participation in planned South Pars hydrocarbon extraction. Last October, Tehran announced that the China National Petroleum Corporation had also withdrawn from its role in helping to develop the giant field.
Platform 14D was shipped from the Sadra shipyard to its offshore location. Its operation should add 500mn cubic feet (14.2mn c/m) of gas to Iran’s South Pars output, according to Pars Oil and Gas Company (POGC), which is solely in charge of South Pars development.
Mohammad Mehdi Tavasoli-Pour, manager of Phase 14, said it was anticipated that production of 56 mcm/d of rich gas would be extracted from the South Pars phase he manages.
A previous platform, Platform 14B, was installed in mid-July last year. It was built over the course of 115 months by Iranian firms.
The first Phase 14 platform, 14A, started operations during summer 2018. The second platform to go operational, 14C, went into service in October 2018.
The CEO of Iran’s Pars Oil and Gas Company (POGC) has said the firm is hoping to upgrade gas extraction and production from the giant South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf to 680mn cubic metres per day (mcm), state energy news agency Shana reported on November 25.
Iran’s South Pars offshore gas terminals are currently producing 630 mcm/d of gas from the offshore field Iran shares with Qatar. US sanctions aimed at Iran brought down an international consortium including POGC, France’s Total and China’s CNPC which had signed a deal to develop further phases of the resource.
Mohammad Meshkinfam, the POGC CEO, said development projects in phases 13, 14 and 22-24 were ongoing under operations run by domestic companies — but he did not name the specific subcontractors.
In the past few months, POGC has installed two new platforms in the gas field. They belong to phases 22-24 of the project. When operational, the platforms will add at least one billion cubic feet per day of gas to overall field output. Meshkinfam added that gas production from phase 14 of the project would begin soon, saying that Platform 14B was ready for production and would go online as soon as it was linked to the pipeline. The platform will operate at 500 bcm/d, Meshkinfam added.
The platform for the 23rd phase of Iran’s South Pars field was installed two weeks ago, a previous Newsbase/bne IntelliNews report noted.
POGC’s acting deputy director for South Pars 22-24, Ali Asghar Sadeghi, was quoted by Shana as saying: “The platform for phase 23 is the third gas platform in phases 22 to 24 of the field. Similar to the first phase’s two platforms, the 23rd phase was constructed by Iran Marine Industrial Co. (SADRA) with the daily production capacity of 14.2 mcm.”
44 IRAN Country Report April 2020 www.intellinews.com
