Azerbaijan, Baku, Jan.22 / Trend F.Milad /
Iran has extracted 500 billion cubic meters of gas from the giant South Pars gas field over the course of 10 years.
Iran is currently producing 300 mcm per day of gas from South Pars, the Mehr News Agency reported.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had said that the gas field's production capacity would reach 480 mcm by September, equaling Iran and Qatar's pace of tapping the joint gas field.
Iranian Oil Minster said in November, 2012 that 775 million cubic meters (mcm) per day of gas could be extracted from South Pars after all its phases come on stream.
The development plan of five phases of Iran's giant South Pars gas field (phases 15-18 and phase 12) has entered its 66th month.
The mentioned phases were supposed to come on stream by the end of current Iranian year (March 20) but none of them is complete yet, the Mehr News agency reported.
Phases 15 and 16 and phase 12 are now 90 per cent and 88 percent complete, respectively, while the physical progress of phases 17 and 18 has reached 76 percent.
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According to the managing director of the Pars Oil and Gas Company, Mousa Souri, Iran has invested over seven billion dollars in the giant South Pars gas field in the first nine months of the current Iranian calendar year which began March 20.
The oil ministry has used the money to equip different phases of South Pars, he said.
By the end of the current year (March 19, 2013) the amount would be raised up to 10 billion dollars, Souri added.
Iran has attached a priority to boosting gas production capacity from its joint oilfields with Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
The country which sits on the world's second largest natural gas reserves after Russia, has been trying to enhance its gas production by increasing foreign and domestic investments, especially in its South Pars gas field.
South Pars is part of a wider gas field that is shared with Qatar. The larger field covers an area of 9700 square kilometres, 3700 square kilometres of which are in Iran's territorial waters (South Pars) in the Persian Gulf.
The remaining 6000 square kilometres, referred to as the North Dome, are in Qatar's territorial waters.
The Iranian gas field contains 14 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, about eight per cent of the world's reserves and more than 18 billion barrels of LNG resources.