Iran Launches New South Pars Platform with Initial Capacity of 10 MCM Per Day

The first platform of Iran’s South Pars gas field, jointly related to phases 17 and 18, came on stream on Tuesday with the capacity of producing 10 million cubic metres of gas (mcm) per day.

Hassan Boyeri, project manager for phases 17 and 18, said that platform 17A’s output will rise to 15 mcm per day within the next 10 days, Shana news agency reported on November 18.

Platform 18A has already started producing 15 mcm of gas per day to be fed to the refineries of phases 15 and 16.

Once the new 17A platform comes on stream, it will boost refining and sweetening capacity of phases 17 and 18's refineries to 40 mcm per day.

South Pars, divided into 29 development phases, contains 40 trillion cubic metres (tcm) of natural gas. It covers an area of 9,700 square kilometres, of which 3,700 square kilometres are in Iran’s territorial waters in the Persian Gulf. The remaining 6,000 square kilometres are situated in Qatar’s territorial waters. The gas field is estimated to contain about 8% of the world’s reserves, and approximately 18 billion barrels of condensate.

Currently Iran produces about 700 mcm per day of enriched gas and plans to increase raw gas production to 1,100 mcm per day by late 2018.

A development plan for phases 17 and 18 is underway with the aim of producing 50 mcm of gas, 80 barrels of gas condensate and 400 tons of sulphur per day.