Azerbaijan, Baku, July 5 / Trend T. Jafarov /
The delayed schedule for implementing the South Pars Field project in Iran is 10 to 30 percent due to technical reasons, member of the Iranian Parliamentary Energy Commission Moayyed Hosseini Sadr said in an interview with Trend.
South Pars is in the Persian Gulf. It is one of the largest gas fields. Its reserves are
estimated at 28 trillion cubic meters of gas andabout 45 billion barrels of condensate.
The deposit is located in the Gulf marine sectors of Iran and Qatar.
According to experts, its reserves hit 14.2 trillion cubic meters in the Iranian sector, or
about 8 percent of the world's gas reserves.
Despite some delays, the field's development is satisfactory, Sadr said.
"The work is conducted on different phases in the South Pars," he said. "The project implementation is satisfactory at certain phases. It is conducted in accordance with the program. The expected results are achieved."
The Iranian government must implement special measures for all phases of the South Pars project to be implemented according to the schedule, he said.
"The gas condensate field South Pars is of great importance for Iran," he said. "As this is a joint deposit of Iran and Qatar, the latest in full force produces gas in its part of the
field."
Increasing investments in the South Pars field, Iran can increase its own gas production, and thereby unilaterally reduce its gas production by Qatar.
The number of international sanctions imposed on Iran over its nuclear program has been recently increased. This led to the fact that foreign companies, previously involved in the project, left it. It affected the decrease in investments in the project.
Previously, several major oil companies, including French company "Total" and Norwegian
"Statoil", abandoned oil and gas projects in Iran. Today, Iran is trying to replace foreign
companies by local investors.
Iran began to sell public bonds to raise additional funds for the first time in 2009. The
bonds worth 1.5 billion euros were put on sale.
Moreover, most Iranian major oil and gas projects were handed over to the Khatam al-Anbya Construction Headquarters of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps during President Ahmadinejad's leadership.