“Currently, about 7,000 people are involved in the construction of the refinery,” the Oil Ministry’s news agency Shana quoted Mohammad Mehdi Tavassolipour as saying.
“With the completion of the refinery, the development of the world's largest gas field in Iran, which holds 8% of the world’s natural gas reserves and about 18 billion barrels of gas condensate, would conclude after more than two decades,” he added.
The South Pars field in the Persian Gulf has 24 phases. Since no more refineries will be built for this section, Phase 14 refinery is the last onshore processing facility in the huge field that Iran shares with Qatar.
The offshore section of the phase is complete and all the platforms are functioning. It has four platforms, each with a production capacity of 14 million cubic meters of gas per day.
Because the new refinery is still under construction, sour gas from the phase is supplied to refineries in phases 12 and 19.
The official said Phase 14, which is an important part of the 9,700-square-kilometer joint field, supplies a part of the gas required by the country in different sectors by producing 56.6 million cubic meters of natural gas, 75,000 barrels of gas condensate and 400 tons of sulfur.
Tavassolipour noted that it also produces 1 million tons of liquefied petroleum gas and 1 million tons of ethane annually to be used as feedstock in petrochemical plants.
The construction and installation of a major part of the phase has already been completed, which include four offshore platforms and drilling of 44 wells about 105 km off the coast of Kangan, two 32-inch offshore gas pipelines with a length of approximately 105 km each and two 4-inch offshore pipelines with an approximate length of 105 km each.
90% Physical Progress
The development of the refinery has registered over 90% progress and efforts are underway to launch its first sweetening train as soon as possible.
Units, including steam boilers and gas condensate storage facilities, have become operational in the phase and other sections, namely instrument air unit and gas sweeteners, are near completion.
The refining unit is equipped with six water boilers with a combined capacity of 160 tons of steam per hour.
The boilers were built by Iran's top engineering and energy enterprise MAPNA Group. Boilers are among the central systems of a refinery.
The amount of investment in South Pars Gas Field has been about $80 billion over the past 20 years.
About 70% of the country's gas are supplied from South Pars. Iran is producing about 1 billion cubic meters of gas per day, about 700 million cubic meters of which are supplied by SP.
South Pars, the world's largest proven offshore natural gas reservoir, contains at least 12 trillion cubic meters of gas, of which close to 9 tcm are extractable and Iran has extracted about 2 tcm of gas from the field in the past 18 years.