Baku, Azerbaijan, April 28
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Iran has invited investors from Germany, Netherlands and China to invest in the country's South Pars gas field projects.
Investors from the countries will visit the Pars Special Economic Energy Zone (PSEEZ) to study the investment opportunities and capacities in the region, managing-director of the PSEEZ, Masoud Nasouri said, Iranian IRNA news agency reported on April 28.
Nasouri went on to say that the PSEEZ has defined new investment packages to encourage the investors.
The big projects are divided into several parts, the official said, adding that investors with low volume of assets can invest in smaller projects. He also underlined that the new packages also include non-industrial projects such as tourism, hotel construction and agriculture.
Nasouri remarked that a delegation including 60 investors from Turkey are visiting the PSEEZ to study the investment opportunities.
The South Pars field has 14 trillion cubic meters of natural gas -or about eight percent of the world's reserves- and more than 18 billion barrels of liquefied natural gas resources.
The field 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 Gulf. The remaining 6,000 square kilometers, referred to as the North Dome, are in Qatar's territorial waters.
Iran's share of the gas field is divided into 29 phases, but just 10 phases are currently operational. No phases of the South Pars gas field have recently come on stream. The country has recently started producing 14 million cubic meters of gas from the Phase 12.
The phase's output is scheduled to reach to 28 million cubic meters by June, Iranian oil minister, Bijan Namdar Zanganeh said on April 28, the country's IRIB news agency reported.
The output of the Phase 12, itself is equal to total output of three phases of the gas field, Zanganeh said, adding that so far some $6 billion were invested in Phase 12.
Iran sits on the world's largest natural gas reserves. The country's estimated reserves are around 33.6 trillion cubic meters.
Edited by C.N.