South Pars phase 11 development operations to start soon

National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC)’s deputy director for development and engineering affairs says the development operations of South Pars gas field’s phase 11 of development are going to be started in near future, Shana reported.

The installation operations of the first jacket of phase 11 will be commenced in the coming weeks,” Reza Dehqan said.

According to the official, the development status of most of the country’s joint fields in border regions has been clarified and development operations for such fields are underway.

“The executive operations at Balal and Farzad fields have also begun and the development projects of other joint fields such as Azadegan, Yadavaran, and Yaran in West Karoun region are being pursued as well,” he said.

Sixth IPC-based deal to be signed soon

Dehqan further pointed out that, so far, NIOC has signed five IPC-based development deals with domestic companies for development of the country’s oil fields, adding that the sixth deal is also ready to be signed but due to the coronavirus outbreak the signing has been delayed and the company will go through with it in near future.

“Over the past three years, the development of 10 fields has been awarded to domestic companies and a total of $10 billion in upstream contracts have been signed,” he said.

He further referred to the NIOC’s maintenance and recovery increase projects and said these projects which include Engineering, Procurement, Construction (EPC) and Engineering, Procurement and Drilling (EPD) deals are going to be awarded in the form of 33 work packages.

"10 contracts were signed last year and nine deals will be signed soon. The rest of the work packages will also be awarded in the first half of the next year [which starts on March 19],” he added.

National Iranian Oil Company signed a contract with Total in 2017 for developing the phase 11 of South Pars gas field (Iran shares with Qatar in the Persian Gulf) with an initial investment of $1 billion, marking the French company the first major Western energy investor in the country after sanctions were lifted in 2016.

The company was pressured to leave Iran after the United States threatened to impose sanctions on companies that do business in the country.

Later on, Iran awarded the project to CNPC which was part of the consortium that was first supposed to carry out the project.

The Chinese company, however, did not go on with the project and left the contract like the French party and the domestic Petropars is now in charge of this phase development project.

The offshore South Pars field holds the world’s largest natural gas reserves ever found in one place.

source: Tehran Times