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Iranian oil minister: South Pars gas field development plan to be completed in 2 years

Iran Materials 2 August 2013 14:35 (UTC +04:00)
Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said that South Pars Gas Field’s development plan will be completed in two years, the IRNA News Agency reported.
Iranian oil minister: South Pars gas field development plan to be completed in 2 years

Azerbaijan, Baku, Aug.2/ Trend R.Zamanov

Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said that South Pars Gas Field's development plan will be completed in two years, the IRNA News Agency reported.

"Once all the phases come on stream, Iran's share of gas extraction will equal to that of Qatar," he said. "Currently the development plans of 17 phases are underway".

"Phases 17 and 18 will come on stream by the end of the current calendar year (March 20)," Qasemi said, adding that the phase 12 will start producing 50 million cubic meters of gas by winter.

It is while the managing director of Iran Marine Industrial Company (SADRA) said on July 30 that announcing a 35-month deadline to develop some of South Pars gas field's phases was unrealistic and political.

"None of the phases have started production yet," the ISNA News Agency quoted Mehdi Etesami as saying.

"The development projects of phase 15 - 18 started in 1385 (2006) when there were no sever sanctions, yet none of the phases are complete. So announcing a 35-month deadline for the phases which their development projects started amid sanctions in 1389 (2010) is totally unrealistic," he said.

"If there were no financial problems, the development projects would be completed in time, but currently we can't buy all the required equipment," he added.

Etesami went on to note that SADRA Company has bought some key offshore equipment but they are stuck in Customs Administration due to lack of financial sources.

"Considering the current situation we can't give any specific date for the completion of the projects," he added.

According to Etesami, the government owes some 50 million dollars to SADRA Company.

"Currently the contractor is using the funds of other phases for developing the phases 12, 15 and 16 since they are more than 90 per cent complete," he added.

He also said that SADRA Company has been blacklisted since 2010 and cannot directly buy equipment but it has formed some groups in Europe and China to negotiate and buy the required equipment.

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.

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