Azerbaijan, Baku, July.22/ Trend R.Zamanov
Hasty inauguration of giant South Pars Gas field's phases may lead to undesirable accidents, the former managing director of Pars Oil & Gas Company said on Monday.
"Any loss caused by the delays could be compensated but an accident could never be compensated," the Mehr News Agency quoted Mousa Souri as saying.
The government announced on Sunday that the gas sweetening facility of the phases 15 and 16 of South Pars Gas field will come on stream in the coming days.
"The government is trying to inaugurate some projects in the last 14 days of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But these hasty moves are dangerous," Souri said.
"Any accident can lead to loss of lives as well as disappointment and losing self-confidence," he added
"The phases 15 and 16 were supposed to come on stream in 60 months, but their development projects has now entered 72th month. So a couple of month," Souri stated.
Mehr News Agency reported on July 12 that the development projects of Iran's South Pars gas field's different phases are either halted or very slow due to financial problems. Currently the progress rate of the most active phase of the field is around 1 to 1.5 percent per month.
During the past three years some 46 billion dollars have been invested in South Pars.
But according to the National Iranian Oil Company's officials, some other 16 to 17 billion dollars should still be invested in the field's development projects in the current year (which started March 21). In order to reach the goal, each month 1 to 1.5 billion dollars should be invested in the project. But as the Mehr News Agency reports, the field's contractors have failed to absorb such amount of money.
Many experts have criticized the oil ministry for not giving priority to development projects of the country's joint oil and gas fields.
While Iran has yet failed to provide necessary financial sources for carrying out development projects of the country's main joint oil and gas fields, the country's oil ministry has signed some multibillion-dollar contracts for development of national oil and gas fields such as Lavan, Mansouri, Tousan, Alfa, Zagheh, Soumar, and Kish.
Iran has not issued bonds in the past 6 months, either.
Gholam-Hossein Khje-Ali, the former managing director of Sepanir Oil & Gas Energy Company which is the biggest contactor of South Pars, told the Mehr News Agency that financial problems are the main reason behind the gas field's slow progress.
The development project of South Pars gas field's phases 15 to 18 will enter its 72th month just in ten days. The mentioned phases have the capacity to produce 100 million cubic meters of gas per day, but even after six years they still are not ready to come on stream.
Phase 12 is now 92 percent complete and it is predicted that with nearly two years of delay some of the phase's offshore wells will start gas production in February 2014.
Other phases of South Pars are also experiencing very slow progress and are not expected to come on stream any time soon.
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