Baku, Azerbaijan, June 23
By Dalga Khatinoglu – Trend:
Iran plans to keep the number of drilling rigs in South Pars gas field unchanged compared to 2014, however five standard South Pars phases have been inaugurated since 2014 and several new phases of the field are prepared to become operational in the coming months.
It means that Iran has concentrated the rigs on new phases which are under development, in order to accelerate drilling operations.
Iran has divided South Pars to 29 standard phases, each one capable to produce 25 million cubic meters per day (mcm/d) of natural gas.
Iran inaugurated phases 1-10 until 2009. The country was developing 17 standard fields until late 2014 by using 16 rigs.
In other words, currently 16 rigs operate on 12 phases, while the number of "under development" phases would reach 8 in the coming months.
Iran produced 355 mcm/d of raw gas from this field so far, and the figure is projected to reach 400 mcm/d by March 2017.
Iran planned to produce 750 mcm/d of gas from South Pars field, when all of phases become operational (except for phase 11) by 2019.
Before 2010, Iran was conducting the drilling work at South Pars with 10 rigs, all of which were rented from foreign companies. The first Iranian rig started to work at the field in late 2010, while the share of Iranian rigs increased to 50 percent in 2013. Currently, 16 rigs are active there, of which eight are Iran's own rigs.
South Pars Phases progress
|
Phases |
August 2013 (%) |
March 2016 (%) |
Mcm/d at plateau |
|
Phase 1-10 |
100 |
100 |
250 |
|
Phase 11 |
- |
0 |
50 |
|
Phase 12 |
81 |
90.6 |
82 |
|
Phases 15-16 |
91.1 |
98.4 |
50 |
|
Phases 17-18 |
77.8 |
93.4 |
50 |
|
Phase 13 |
63.8 |
75.9 |
50 |
|
Phases 14 |
50.6 |
61.8 |
50 |
|
Phase 19 |
65.3 |
92 |
50 |
|
Phases 20-21 |
50.2 |
85.7 |
50 |
|
Phases 22-24 |
63.4 |
80.2 |
75 |
|
Total |
- |
- |
757 |
Source: Oil ministry
Dalga Khatinoglu is the head of Trend Agency's Iran news service, follow him on Twitter: @dalgakhatinoglu