Tehran, Iran, May 8
By Umid Niayesh, Kamyar Eghbalnejad - Trend:
Cooperation of Iran and Total in the South Pars gas field is on its path without delay, Reza Dehghan, the director for coordination of oil and gas upstream contracts at National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), said.
Currently, cooperation of Total and Iran for development of South Pars Phase 11 is going ahead, within the schedule under the signed contract, Dehghan told Trend May 8.
He made the remarks while answering a question about the possible impact of the US' likely decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal.
The French company signed a deal with National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) last July to develop Phase 11 of Iran’s South Pars field with an initial investment of $1 billion. It was the first major Western energy investment in the Islamic Republic since sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear power program were lifted in 2016.
The project will have a production capacity of 56 million cubic meters of gas per day. The produced gas will be supplied to the Iranian domestic market starting in 2021.
The contract, which has a 20-year duration, is the first Iranian Petroleum Contract (IPC) and is based on the technical, contractual and commercial terms as per the Heads of Agreement signed Nov. 8, 2016.
Total will be the operator with a 50.1 percent stake, alongside Chinese state-owned oil and gas company CNPC with 30 percent and Petropars, a subsidiary of National Iranian Oil Co., with 19.9 percent.
Dehghan further said that Total has held various tenders to attract sub-contractors for the project as well.
"In some cases we are ahead of the program in the project," he said, adding, “We are fully satisfied with the cooperation. However, regarding the future developments we should wait and see.”