POGC Assigned to Complete South Pars Oil Layer Plan

Pars Oil and Gas Company was assigned by the National Iranian Oil Company to complete the second phase of a plan to develop the South Pars Gas Field’s oil layer in the Persian Gulf, the managing director of POGC said.

“Operations to complete the second phase has started with the help of FPSO Cyrus, the floating production, storage and offloading vessel on the hydrocarbon reservoir,” the Oil Ministry’s news website also quoted Mohammad Hossein Motejalli as saying.

The first phase of the project was carried out in 2016 for expanding the hydrocarbon layer and extracting more crude from the reservoir over the next 20 years, he added.

The official noted that as per the contract, worth $500 million, signed between NIOC and POGC, the latter is obliged to double the field’s current output of 25,000 barrels per day.

“The layer is estimated to contain up to 12 billion barrels of light crude, but new explorations could potentially increase the in-place reserves,” he said.

“Qatar is drawing crude from the gas field from six layers. Therefore, it is also possible for us to find more amounts of crude by tapping into deeper layers of South Pars, but it requires further explorations and assessments.”

 

South Pars Oil Layer

The oil layer of South Pars is located 130 kilometers off Iran’s coast in the Persian Gulf. It is adjacent to several oil deposits in the Persian Gulf, including Sepand in the southwest, Hamoun in the northeast and Balal in the southeast.

Iran began to draw crude oil from South Pars in 2016 using a floating production storage and offloading vessel, named FPSO Cyrus.

The FPSO has the capacity to load 30,000 barrels of crude per hour, or more than 700,000 barrels per day. However, Iran currently pumps around 25,000 daily, as it seeks to maximize production over a longer period.

An FPSO is a marine vessel, with processing equipment aboard the vessel’s deck as well as hydrocarbon storage units. After processing, an FPSO stores oil or gas before offloading periodically to shuttle tankers or transmitting processed petroleum via pipelines.

South Pars Oilfield is located in the Persian Gulf, about 130 kilometers off Iran’s coast and adjacent to Qatar’s territorial waters, holding an estimated 7 billion barrels of oil in place. The field is the northeastern extension of Al-Shaheen Oilfield in Qatar.

POGC oversees the development of major gas fields. Iran has close to 34 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves – about 18% of the total global reserves.

 

Kish Gas Field

Motejalli noted that POGC signed a $900 million contract last week 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.

In addition to producing 11,000 barrels of gas condensates, the project will produce 28 million cubic meters per day of sour gas in 14 months.

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, in addition to drilling 14 wells on the project site.

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.

 

Kish gas field is the fifth offshore gas field in the world

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.

According to the POGC Public Relations Office, special pipes using corrosion resistant alloys will be used for the field, which are widely used in the petroleum sector.

The field will have a 70% extraction rate in the first phase and produce 28 million cubic meters of natural gas and 11,000 barrels of gas condensates per day as soon as the first phase becomes operational.

Unlike South Pars (shared with Qatar), Kish is fully inside Iranian maritime borders near the Strait of Hormuz. Given its strategic location, it is being seen as a major gas hub in the oil-rich region.

“This and other contracts show that the (US) sanctions have not stopped us. Our oil, gas and petrochemical industries are functioning,” Iran’s Oil Minister Javad Owji said.

Published: May 22, 2023

 

 

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