South Pars Condensate Export at 91m Barrels in 5 Months

EghtesadOnline: Exports of gas condensates from South Pars Gas Field in the Persian Gulf in the first five months of the current fiscal year (started on March 21) experienced an 18% increase over the same period last year, exceeding 91 million barrels, managing director of South Pars Gas Complex (SPGC) said.

News ID: ۷۷۹۰۰۵

04 September 2017

Masoud Hassani added that the production figure in said period stood at 87 million barrels that is 13% higher than the output in the same period of last year, IRNA reported.

According to the official, exports volume in the period outweighed the output level as SPGC tapped into storage reserves. The states indicate that SPGC is currently shipping out all of its gas condensates production, Financial Tribune reported.

Pointing to natural gas production in the five-month period, Hassani noted, "Close to 68 billion cubic meters of natural gas has been extracted from the joint reservoirs that indicates a 15% rise compared to the corresponding period last year."

"The complex has produced 55 bcm of sweetened gas in the last five months, up 16% year-on-year," he said, adding that SPGC has set records in producing a wide range of its commodities namely ethane, propane and butane as well as sulfur.

Asked about ethane output, Hassani noted that the complex output in the first five months of 2016 stood at 887,000 tons, yet it had a 28% rise during the same span in 2017, reaching 1.13 million tons.

South Pars also produced 590,000 tons of propane, 350,000 tons of butane and close to 220,000 tons of sulfur in five months.

2nd Refinery Output

According to Mahdi Gerami Shirazi, the head of South Pars' 2nd Refinery, phases 2 and 3 have produced a total of 8.1 bcm of gas since March 21, the beginning of this fiscal year, or approximately 56 million cubic meters daily.

Shirazi also added that the refinery's gas condensates and sulfur output in the period stood at 10 million barrels and 53,000 tons respectively.

According to the official, all sulfur consignments produced in phases 2 and 3 are being shipped overseas.

Referring to China and India as the biggest customers of Iranian sulfur and condensates, he said that due to low demand in Europe, Iran is concentrating on expanding exports to Asia.

The refinery receives natural gas from phases 2 and 3 of South Pars Gas Field for processing and pumping it into the national gas trunkline, aka IGAT. The second refinery came on stream 20 years ago as the first of 14 planned processing facilities for Iran's mega South Pars project.

South Pars is the world's largest gas reservoir in the Persian Gulf shared between Iran and Qatar. It holds an estimated 51 trillion cubic meters of natural gas in place and some 50 billion barrels of gas condensates.

Iran launched the first phase of a major condensate refining plant, the Persian Gulf Star Refinery, in April. Located in Hormozgan Province, the plant is being developed in three phases, with the first development phase to produce 12 million liters per day of Euro-4 gasoline, 4.5 ml/d of Euro-4 diesel, 1 ml/d of kerosene and 300,000 liters per day of liquefied petroleum gas.