Baku, Azerbaijan, Sept.29
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:
Iran has increased natural gas extraction from the South Pars gas field by 14 percent in the first half of the current Iranian year, which began on March 21.
Masoud Hassani, the managing director of the South Pars Gas Complex Company, said the value of the extracted gas is about $1.2 billion, Iran's Shana news agency reported on September 29.
The production of gas condensates from the field rose by 12.5 percent in the mentioned period of time, he said.
The increase in production caused by both rising the gas production in early commissioned phase 12 of South Pars and shortening the periodical maintaining time of refineries.
Iran's largest gas field is South Pars, a non-associated gas field located offshore in the middle of the Persian Gulf. South Pars is a portion of a larger gas structure that straddles the territorial water borders of Iran and Qatar. It is called the Northfield in Qatar. South Pars reserves account for roughly 40 percent of Iran's total gas reserves, and the field is also estimated to hold 17 million barrels of condensates.
Iran's oil minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh had said that Iran will outpace Qatar in extraction of natural gas from South Pars gas field by March 2018.
The development of five phases of the gas field will be completed in Iranian year 1396 (March 2017-March 2018). Once the phases come on stream, Iran will boost gas production by 400 million cubic meters(mcmpd), Iran's Mehr news agency quoted Zanganeh as saying on August 27.
Iran is producing a little more than 300 mcmpd of gross gas from 11 phases of South Pars. Iran also produces a little more than 0.4 million barrels per day of gas condensate, mostly from South Pars.
This is while,Qatar's dry natural gas production reached 5.5 trillion cubic feet in 2012, and the vast majority of Qatar's production comes from the North Field (South Pars), the U.S. Energy Information Administration had said.
Qatar's gas condensate output from this join field is more than that of Iran.