Baku, Azerbaijan, May 4
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:
Iran will invest $9.5 billion in the development of the South Pars gas field in the current Iranian solar year, which began on March 21.
South Pars Oil and Gas Company Managing Director Ali Akbar Shabanpour said the sum has been allocated to accelerate the development of the gas field, Iran's Shana news agency reported on May 4.
However, experts believe that the budget will be sufficient just for the development of five prioritized phases of the gas field, namely phases 12, 15-18).
Last year, just 9 percent of $22 billion which had been allocated to the South Pars was actually invested, showing 70 percent decrease year on year, according to Shana.
The National Energy Fund of Iran allocated €500 million to the domestic oil projects in the past Iranian calendar year, which ended on March 20, IRNA reported on March 31.
Over half of the sum has been invested in the development of the South Pars gas field, especially in phase 19 of the gas field, the report added.
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 8 percent of the world's reserve, and more than 18 billion barrels of LNG resources.
Iran invested $2 billion out of its National Energy Fund into the giant South Pars gas field in the past two years, deputy director of National Iranian Oil Company, Ali Kardor, said on March 10, Iran's IRIB News Agency reported.
"Iran plans to allocate $5 billion of the fund to the South Pars gas field," he said.