Tehran, YJC. Iran has announced it expects to overtake Qatar in production of natural gas from a major field shared between the 2 countries within the next 3 years.
Iran’s Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zangeneh has emphasized that the country
will complete the entire projects it has defined in South Pars gas field before
April 2018.
"That would put Iran ahead of Qatar in terms of the daily production of
natural gas,” Zangeneh has been quoted as saying by Ta’adol daily.
Nevertheless, he added, Qatar will still be ahead from the viewpoint of
overall production given that it started the producing of gas from the field
sooner than Iran.
South Pars – which Qatar calls the North Dome– is one of the world’s largest
gas reservoirs.
South Pars is believed to hold an estimated reserve of 51 trillion cubic
meters of in-place natural gas and over 50 billion barrels of gas condensates.
Iran has defined its own part of the field into 29 projects or phases.
About half of the phases have already been completed and operations to
bring the rest on stream are currently underway.
Iran’s Oil Minister blamed US-led sanctions on Iran for slowing the progress
of Iranian oil and gas projects. However, he emphasized, Iran has been able to
push ahead many projects – specifically in South Pars – in face of the
sanctions.