Tehran, Iran, Oct. 21
By Milad Fashtami - Trend:
The former Managing Director of Pars Oil and Gas Company Mohammadreza Zahiri said that the country needs a floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel to start oil production at the oil layer of the South Pars gas field.
The South Pars/North Dome gas field is shared by Iran and Qatar.
"Without a FPSO vessel, tapping the oil later is not possible," he said, Iran's Tasnim News Agency reported on October 21.
An FPSO unit is a floating vessel used by the offshore oil and gas industry for the processing of hydrocarbons and for storage of oil.
An FPSO vessel is designed to receive hydrocarbons produced from nearby platforms or subsea template, process them, and store oil until it can be offloaded onto a tanker or, less frequently, transported through a pipeline.
FPSOs are preferred in frontier offshore regions as they are easy to install, and do not require a local pipeline infrastructure to export oil.
Iran still doesn't extract any oil from the oil layer of South Pars/North Dome joint gas field, while Qatar is tapping the field.
The South Pars oil layer was discovered in 1988. Ten years later the first exploratory well was drilled. But the work halted for six years and finally the project was transferred to PetroIran Company in 2005.
The first phase of extracting oil from the South Pars gas field was supposed to come on stream by March 2013.
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