TEHRAN - The managing director of Petropars Company, which is in charge of developing phase 11 of Iran’s South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf, said his company has conducted nearly 4,200 meters of drilling in this phase despite unstable winter weather conditions.

“Despite the unfavorable and unstable winter weather conditions in the Persian Gulf, the drilling operations of phase 11 of South Pars are underway without interruption, and so far, 4180 meters of drilling has been done,” Hamid-Reza Masoudi said.

According to the official, the drilling operations of the mentioned phase begun on December 14, 2020.

He pointed out that in order to achieve early production from this phase, drilling operations will be conducted in two stages, saying: “In the first stage, a descriptive well and three production wells will be drilled and completed, and then after the installation of the phase’s platform, eight more wells will be drilled and completed.”

Emphasizing that Petropars tries to make maximum use of the capacities and capabilities of domestic companies and workforce in developing this phase, Masoudi said: "This project has so far offered direct employment for about 500 people while creating indirect job opportunities for about 2,000 people.”

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh, on December 14, 2020, ordered the official beginning of the drilling operations for the first well of Phase 11 in the Persian Gulf waters.

An offshore drilling rig, belonging to Mapna Drilling Company, was settled at the mentioned phase’s SPD-11B platform on November 6, 2020.

In the early production stage, the output of this phase will reach 500 million cubic feet (equivalent to 14 million cubic meters) per day.

In November 2016, Iran signed a $4.8 billion agreement with a consortium including France’s Total, China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), and Petropars, a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), on development of phase 11, however Total and CNPCI pulled out of the project in 2019 due to the U.S. sanctions.

Currently, Petropars is developing the phase 11 project after its partners left the contract.

The South Pars phase 11 project will have a production capacity of two billion cubic feet per day or 370, 000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. The produced gas will be fed into Iran's gas network.

South Pars is the world’s largest gas field, covering an area of 3,700 square kilometers of Iran’s territorial waters.

The giant field is estimated to contain a significant amount of natural gas, accounting for about eight percent of the world’s reserves, and approximately 18 billion barrels of condensate. The field is divided into 24 standard phases.

EF/MA