Phases 20 & 21 of Iran’s South Pars Gas Field to Start Production in June 2016

Phases 20 and 21 of Iran’s South Pars gas field will start production by the end of the third Iranian fiscal month of Khordad next year (June 21, 2016).

Alireza Ebadi, the acting director of development of phases 20 and 21, said that all the wells in both phases will come on stream by May 21 and June 21, respectively, Shana news agency reported on November 15.

He added that offshore and onshore pipelining of the phases 21 and 20 are complete by 92 percent and 30 percent, respectively.

Refined natural gas produced in the two phases will be transferred to the national gas network by the next two months, he noted.

Construction of the phases’ platforms is complete by 82 percent, he said, adding that platforms of the phases 20 and 21 will be commissioned by April 21 next year.

The development of the phases 20 and 21 is aimed at producing 50 million cubic meters of natural gas, 77,000 barrels of gas condensates, and 400 metric tons of sulfur per day, as well as 1.1 million metric tons of LPG and one million metric ton of ethane per year.

South Pars, divided into 29 development phases, contains 40 trillion cubic meters (tcm) of natural gas. It covers an area of 9,700 square kilometers, of which 3,700 square kilometers are in Iran’s territorial waters in the Persian Gulf. The remaining 6,000 square kilometers are situated in Qatar’s territorial waters. The gas field is estimated to contain about 8 percent of the world’s reserves, and approximately 18 billion barrels of condensate.

Currently Iran produces about 700 mcm/d of enriched gas and plans to increase the raw gas production to 1,100 mcm/d by late 2018.