Page 43 - IRANRptSep21

Iran’s Caspian Sea gas find ‘may be so large it could meet a fifth of European gas needs’
Zanganeh outlines stages of pipeline completion
Reuters.
The Taliban, the news agency added, sent messages both to Iranian traders and to an Iranian chamber of commerce, which has close links to the government. Subsequently, the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration (IRICA) ended a ban on fuel exports to Afghanistan. It was brought in on August 6 because of Iran's anxieties about the safety of trading in the country.
Those concerns have been eased by the Taliban's attitude, Hosseini was also cited as saying.
Since the US under its previous Trump administration brought in a sanction against Tehran that bars fuel exports, Iran has turned to grey and black market petroleum product trading, part of which has involved the trucking of fuel to neighbours including Afghanistan.
Iran’s main exports to Afghanistan are in fact gasoline and gasoil. Iran exported about 400,000 tonnes of fuel to its neighbour from May 2020 to May 2021, according to a report published by PetroView, an Iranian oil and gas research and consultancy platform.
Afghanistan has no developed oil industry of its own. It is limited to six mini-refineries that produce just several thousand barrels per day of refined products each. They run on light oil from Turkmenistan.
Iran is hopeful of confirming a huge new gas deposit located in the Iranian sector of the Caspian Sea, large enough to supply around a fifth of Europe’s gas needs, according to the country’s Khazar Exploration and Production Company (KEPCO).
The Chalous structure could conceivably bring about a new gas hub in northern Iran to complement the southern gas hub centred on the massive South Pars field in the Persian Gulf that Iran shares with Qatar.
KEPCO is the principal developer for the field, but technical and financial assistance will come from Russia and China, according to OilPrice.com, which on August 20 said Chalous is a “geopolitical gamechanger”.
The price and destination of Chalous gas would be co-ordinated with Russia, “adding to the energy power that Moscow has over Europe, already a key matter of contention between Europe and its Nato partner, the U.S.,” the publication wrote.
KEPCO’s chief executive officer, Ali Osouli, has said the Chalous structure is estimated to hold gas reserves equivalent to a quarter of the supergiant South Pars gas field. South Pars has an estimated 14.2 trillion cubic metres (tcm) of gas reserves in place plus 18bn barrels of gas condensate. It already accounts for around 40% of Iran’s estimated 33.8 tcm of gas reserves and around 80% of Iranian gas production.
Outgoing Iranian Minister of Petroleum Bijan Zanganeh said last week that the country’s new Goreh-Jask pipeline will reach full design capacity of 1mn barrels per day (bpd) by the end of the current Iranian calendar year in March 2022.
Speaking during a ceremony to mark the launch of the strategic conduit, Zanganeh said that having launched at 300,000 bpd, capacity would increase to 400,000 bpd by October, 500,000 bpd by December and 750,000 bpd by January 2022, reaching full throughput capacity of 1mn bpd by March.
He added that the line had been completed in compliance with all national and international standards and called it a “unique manifestation of smashing the sanctions and relying on domestic capabilities”.
Work is ongoing to expand capacity for Phase 2, with crude flows fed from fields in the prolific West Karoun cluster in south-west Iran’s Khuzestan
43 IRAN Country Report September 2021 www.intellinews.com