South Pars Crude Output at 19,000 bpd in Six Months

EghtesadOnline: Iran produced an average of 19,000 barrels per day of crude from the oil layer of the giant South Pars Gas Field in the Persian Gulf in the first half of the current fiscal year that started on March 21.

News ID: ۷۷۹۹۱۱

23 October 2017

Officials had previously placed daily production between 20,000 and 25,000 barrels, with the rate unlikely to change by June next year, IRNA reported.

Iran aims to stabilize production from the SP layer at 25,000 bpd and gradually boost output to 55,000-60,000 bpd.

The country had drawn over 3.1 million barrels of crude oil from the layer by the middle of last month and a 500,000-barrel oil consignment was scheduled for loading in mid-October, Financial Tribune reported.

Extraction from the oil layer of South Pars began in March using a floating production storage and offloading vessel. The FPSO was reportedly built in Singapore at a cost of $300 million. Tehran plans to further develop the South Pars oil layer under the framework of Iran Petroleum Contract, the new model of contracts geared to attracting international oil and gas majors. Iranian officials say that due to the layer's complicated geological structure, advanced horizontal drilling technology is required to tap into the resources.

Denmark's Maersk Oil has been considered as a top candidate to win the oil layer's development rights. The company was recently acquired by French energy firm Total S.A. that holds stakes in an offshore phase of the mega South Pars gas project. Maersk produces oil from the Danish and UK sections of the North Sea, Qatar, Algeria and Kazakhstan. It supports global oil and gas production by providing modern drilling services to oil companies across the world. Karim Zobeidi, the head of a special department at NIOC that oversees the performance of reservoirs, said last month that negotiations with the Danish company over the development of South Pars oil production project have not yielded positive results yet.

South Pars oil layer is located 130 kilometers off Iran's coast in the Persian Gulf with an estimated 7 billion barrels of oil in place, but it is hard to put an accurate estimate on the volume unless more exploratory wells are drilled.