Tehran, Iran, March 18
Trend:
Iranian president Hassan Rouhani has inaugurated phases 22,23,24 and 13 of the South Pars at Kangan County in Bushehr Province.
The new phases are to work as part of gas refinery and production units of various products of the South Pars development plans, Trend reports citing ILNA.
Each of the new phases has a daily capacity of producing 56 million cubic meters of natural gas.
In these four phases, 77,000 barrels of gas condensate and 400 tons of sulfur are produced on a daily basis, and 1.5 million tons of liquid gas and one million tons of ethane are also produced per year, officials say.
"Today is a very auspicious day for the Iranian nation, which has dealt strong blows to enemies, because they thought that by imposing sanctions, they would be able to stop all our plans and advances," Rouhani added.
The inauguration of the new phases of Iran's South Pars gas field has been seen by experts as a clear sign of the failure of US sanctions against the country's energy sector, which were mainly meant to curtail Iran's production of oil and gas as its main revenue sources.
Iran’s capacity for daily gas extraction from the joint gas field has now reached 660 million cubic meters.
South Pars, whose development has been divided into 28 phases, is located in the Persian Gulf straddling the maritime border between Iran and Qatar. It covers an area of 9,700 square kilometers, of which 3,700 square kilometers belongs to Iran.
US President Donald Trump withdrew Washington in May last year from the landmark Iran nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) reached between Iran and the P5+1 group of countries in 2015, and decided to re-impose unilateral sanctions against Tehran.
Under the deal, Iran undertook to put limits on its nuclear program in exchange for the removal of nuclear-related sanctions.
Trump's administration announced re-imposition of the "toughest" sanctions ever against Iran's banking and energy sectors with the aim of cutting off the country's oil sales and crucial exports.