Azerbaijan, Baku, Nov.4/ Trend F.Milad/
The daily gas output of Iran's South Pars gas field will reach 1.4 billion cubic meters by the end of Iranian Calendar year of 1394 (March 20, 2016), the Iranian oil minister said on Sunday.
The current gas output of South Pars stands at 600 million cubic meters per day, the IRNA News Agency quoted Rostam Ghasemi as saying.
"South Pars gas field also produces some 400.000 barrels of gas condensate per day, " he added.
Ghasemi expressed hope that the figure will gradually reach one million barrels per day.
Previously, the Iranian oil minister said that Iran will start extracting oil from the oil layer of South Pars gas field by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (March 19, 2013).
"Extracting oil from south pars gas field will boost the country's foreign exchange income considerably," the SHANA News Agency quoted Rostam Qasemi as saying on October 23.
The initial drilling in the joint and non-joint oil layers of the South Pars oil field was launched on July 15.
The oil layer is projected to yield 35,000 barrels per day (bpd) in the first phase, and the output will be increased to 54,000 bpd in the next phase.
Around $800 million is needed to develop the oil layer both in onshore and offshore sections, he said.
The South Pars oil layer is estimated to hold some 1.6 billion barrels of crude.
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 percent of the total world reserves, and more than 18 billion barrels of liquefied natural gas resources.