Baku, Azerbaijan, Feb. 11
By Fatih Karimov – Trend:
Iran has imported its first floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel for extracting oil from the South Pars oil layer, Roham Qasemi, the managing director of Petro Iran Company, said.
The FPSO vessel is sailing to the South Pars for deployment at its planned location within the next few days, Qasemi said, Mehr news agency reported Feb. 11.
FPSO unit is a floating vessel used by the offshore oil and gas industry for the production, processing of hydrocarbons and for storage of oil. An FPSO vessel is designed to receive hydrocarbons produced by itself or from nearby platforms or subsea template, process them, and store oil until it can be offloaded onto a tanker or, less frequently, transported through a pipeline.
Ali Kardor, head of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), earlier said that Iran plans to start extracting oil from the South Pars oil layer from early 2017.
The FPSO was manufactured in Singapore for $300 million.
Iran eyes to pump 35,000 barrels of crude oil a day from the field, which it shares with Qatar in the first phase of the project.
The figure is planed to reach 200,000 barrels in next 20 years. At least 300 wells will be drilled in this regard.
It was earlier announced that Tehran will offer second phase of the layer development project to foreigners.
Kardor said in August 2016 that Iranian companies are working on the first phase of the project, but they lack the necessary technology for development of other phases.