Azerbaijan, Baku, Jul 5 / Trend, R. Zamanov
Five phases of the South Pars gas field will come on stream by the end of the Iranian month of Shahrivar (September 22), the Iranian oil minister said on Friday.
"Despite severe western sanctions, Iran's oil and gas sector continue to carry out development projects," the IRNA News Agen quoted Rostam Qasemi as saying.
"Currently, over 100,000 people are working towards the development of the South Pars gas field," he added.
"At the current rate of extraction, Iran's oil and gas reserves could last for many years," Qasemi explained.
The former managing director of the South Pars gas field's main contractor said on July 2 that sanctions should be lifted from Iran's oil and gas sector; otherwise no phase of the giant gas field could come on stream.
Gholam-Hossein Khje-Ali, the former managing director of Sepanir Oil & Gas Energy Company also criticized the oil ministry officials' decisions, the Mehr News Agency reported.
Sepanir Company is an affiliate of Khatam al-Anbia Construction Headquarters. The company is in charge of developing the phases 15 and 16 of South Pars gas field.
Khaje-Ali rejected the oil minister's claim and said that South Pars gas field development projects are facing severe financial problems.
"The oil ministry pays contractors in Chinese yuan and Indian rupee, but they are no good when buying needed equipment," he explained.
"Officials all are aware of problems, but they prefer to hid them," he added.
Answering a question about the oil minister's dissatisfaction regarding the progress of phases 15 and 16, Khaje-Ali said that the oil minister himself could be held responsible for the delay in development projects of the gas field.
"Phases 15 and 16 are now 94 per cent complete, but we lack proper equipment to complete the projects. Unless the equipment is provided, nothing can be done to complete the projects," he said.
Khaje-Ali further said that he never resigned, but he is no longer the managing director of Sepanir.
Some of the phases of the South Pars gas field are way behind the schedule. For example, the development plan of phases 15 and 16 have entered their 7th year. The mentioned phases were supposed to come on stream by the end of the previous current Iranian year (March 20, 2014) but none of them is complete yet.
South Pars is part of a wider gas field that is shared with Qatar. The larger field covers an area of 9,700 square kilometers, 3,700 square kilometers of which are in Iran's territorial waters (South Pars) in the Persian Gulf. The remaining 6,000 square kilometers, 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 percent of the world's reserves, and more than 18 billion barrels of LNG resources.
Doha's gas pump currently is two times more than Iran, while its extraction share from the field's oil layer is 13 times more than Tehran.
Iran is currently producing around 285 mcm per day of gas, and 35,000 barrels of oil from South Pars. It is while Qatar extracts some 450,000 barrels of oil from the gas field's oil layer.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had said that the gas field's production capacity would reach 480 mcm by September, equaling Qatar's pace of tapping the joint gas field.
Iran has extracted 500 billion cubic meters of gas from South Pars over the course of 15 years.
Qatar announced last year that its total gas extraction from the field had reached one trillion cubic meters.
Thanks to extracting gas from the joint field, Qatar is currently world's largest LNG exporter. It's annual LNG exports stands at 77 million tons.
Due to the US-generated sanctions against Iran's oil and gas sector, giant foreign companies have left the country. This has caused severe problems for Iran in regards to developing joint oil and gas fields.