Baku, Azerbaijan, June 8
By Fatih Karimov - Trend:
The annual exploitation from South Pars gas field will be equal to that of Qatar by the March 2017, Ali Akbar Shabanpour, managing director of Pars Oil and Gas Company (POGC) said.
Shabanpour said that phases 17, 18, 19, 20 and 21 of the South Pars gas field will become operational during the current Iranian fiscal year (started March 20), IRNA news agency reported June 8.
Once the five phases become operational, Iran's daily gas production in the field will reach 500 million cubic meters.
Iran's exploitation of South Pars was 50 percent of Qatar's in the fiscal year to March 2014, Shabanpour said.
While Qatar's annual exploitation from the joint field remained at 177 billion cubic meters in the last three years, Iran's output increased to 132 billion cubic meters in the last fiscal year (March, 2015-2016), reaching 75 percent of Qatar's production, he added.
Iran and Qatar were equal in exploiting the gas field in 2005-2006.
South Pars is divided into 24 development phases and contains 40 trillion cubic meters of natural gas.
It covers an area of 9,700 square kilometers, 3,700 square kilometers of which are in Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf. The remaining 6,000 square kilometers are situated in Qatar's territorial waters.