Azerbaijan, Baku, Apr. 27/ Trend F.Milad/
Iran will start tapping into phases 15, 16, 17 and 18 of the South Pars gas field in the near future, the deputy director of the Pars Oil and Gas Company said.
Gholamreza Bahmannia added that the phases will come on- stream by the end of the current calendar year (March 2013), the IRIB reported.
The South Pars gas field accounts for some 40 per cent of the country's total gas output, he said, adding that once phases 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20 and 21 come on- stream, the capacity will reach 70 per cent.
Iran should invest $36 billion per year in the domestic oil industry by the end of the fifth five-year development plan (2015), the managing director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) said last week.
"The figure will be increased to $40 billion in the best case and dropped to $30 billion in the worst case," the NIOC head Ahmad Qalebani added, ISNA news agency reported.
He also said that some $135 billion worth of projects are underway, of which 75 per cent are being carried out by domestic contractors.
The Iran Oil Ministry has approved a $22.8-billion budget for developing different phases of the South Pars gas field in the current calendar year which began on March 20, Pana news agency reported.
In 2009, Iran said that development of the remaining phases of South Pars required investment of $40 billion over 10 years.
The South Pars gas field is shared by Iran and Qatar.
The Iranian share which is divided into 29 phases has about 14 trillion cubic meters of gas, or about eight per cent of the total world reserves and more than 18 billion barrels of liquefied natural gas resources.