Baku, Azerbaijan, April 2
By Khalid Kazimov – Trend:
South Pars, the world’s largest gas field, in southern Iran is expected to see the inauguration of five new phases over the current fiscal year, which started on March 20.
The gas field experienced a major breakthrough over the last year as President Hassan Rouhani inaugurated five phases in early fiscal 2017/18, IRNA news agency reported.
In the meantime, the president inaugurated a project on development of the oil layer of South Pars.
After completing their onshore and offshore projects, three development plans of the phases of 17-21 also came on stream over the last year.
Over the recent year, the daily output of the gas field surged 2.5 folds and hit 570 million cubic meters.
South Pars, with 14 trillion cubic meters of reserves on the Iranian side, is jointly owned with Qatar. Iran divided its side of the field into 24 phases and the field's final output capacity is expected to be above 800 million cubic meters per day after launching all phases.
The field 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 in Qatar's territorial waters.
Iran hopes to complete all South Pars phases by March 2019, a target that officials say requires investments worth $20-30 billion.