South Pars Can Store 4m Barrels of Gas Liquids at New SPEEZ Facilities

Pars Oil and Gas Company, a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company, said the facility will help South Pars gas refineries (South Pars Gas Field) to store four million barrels of condensates, IRNA reported. It has eight storage tanks with a capacity of 500,000 barrels each.

If hydrocarbon export is constrained it can be transferred to target destinations via a pipeline and single point mooring that can be converted locally into high value added products such as gasoline.

According to Amirmansour Haqverdi, director of the POGC project, the large storage unit will supply Persian Gulf Star Refinery in Hormozgan Province, Shiraz Pars Refinery and Nouri Petrochemical Plant in Bushehr Province with 360,000, 100,000 and 120,000 barrels of condensates per day, respectively. 

“Feedstock for eight Siraf oil refineries in Bushehr and Farzanegan gas condensate refinery in Asalouyeh, Bushehr Province, will be sold via the zone.”

The project cost $50 million and was implemented in five years based on three EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction) contracts, namely EPC1, EPC 2 and EPC 3.

Under EPC1, procurement of major equipment, utilities, piping, electricity and instrumentation engineering was undertaken. EPC2 and EPC3 took care of gas storage tanks as well as a fire fighting storage tanks.

"The tanks were built by Machine Sazi Arak Company in Markazi Province," Haqverdi said, adding that Nardis Company was in charge of welding and providing equipment for construction work.

South Pars gas complex produces 680,000 barrels of gas condensates per day, 360,000 barrels of which is delivered to the PGSR in Bandar Abbas to produce gasoline.

“Gas condensate is also sold to petrochemical plants in Asalouyeh and Mahshahr in the south as feedstock and offered in the international ring of the Iran Energy Exchange.”

Gas condensate is a low-density mixture of hydrocarbon liquids present as gaseous components in raw natural gas produced from gas fields.

As Iran increases gas output (850 million cubic meters per day) and expects to boost it to 1 billion cubic meters by March, gas condensate production is rising.

SPGC comprises 75% and 92% of total natural gas and gas condensate output, respectively. South Pars is the world's largest gas field shared between Iran and Qatar. It is developed in 24 phases, of which 23 are in operation. 

Gas Turbines

In related news, the news agency quoted Energy Minister Reza Ardakanian as saying that condensates will be used for gas turbines in power stations in the near future.

“Advantages of using gas condensates in turbines instead of natural gas is that it has lower emissions and is environmentally-friendly,” the minister said.

A lean, premixed, pre-vaporized (LPP) combustion technology has been developed that converts liquid fuels into a substitute for natural gas.

This technology offers the possibility of using gas condensates for power generation in a gas turbine equipped with a dry low emission system. DLE is a technology that reduces nitrogen oxide emissions that exhausts out of gas-fired turbines.