Baku, Azerbaijan, Nov. 8
By Emil Ilgar – Trend:
Iran plans to install 20 heavy booster compression platforms in South Pars gas field, the Managing Director of Pars Oil and Gas Company Mohammad Meshkin Fam told SHANA Nov. 8.
He said the 20,000-ton platforms would boost the pressure by 90 bars to produce 56 million cubic meters per day (mcm/d) of gas.
Meshkin Fam added that Iran plans to manufacture the booster compression platforms inside the country, but the current infrastructure is capable for building 7,000-ton platforms only.
“The infrastructure should be expanded for manufacturing heavier platforms,” he said.
South Pars, with about 30 trillion cubic meters of gas reserves, is a joint field with Qatar. A third of South Pars is in Iran’s waters.
Currently, Iran produces 450 mcm/d of gas from this field, while the figure is expected to reach 520 mcm/d by March 2017 to reach Qatar’s output.
Iran also plans to complete the remaining phases of this field to increase the output to about 780 mcm/d by 2021, but the pressure in the field is expected to decrease significantly in 2023 and it will reach such a level that installing gas compressors will be unavoidable.
Currently, platforms with weight of 1,500-2,000 tons are active in the field, but for installing compressors the platforms 10 times bigger than the current ones are needed.
Two such compressors at each platform could increase the output by 70 percent.
Cumulative gas production from South Pars reached 3.4 trillion cubic meters, of which Iran’s share is 1 trillion cubic meters.
South Pars was divided to 24 phases on the Iranian side.