Significant gas recovery from the enormous resource will commence in the second half of the next Iranian calendar year that begins on 21 March 2021. The long-stalled Phase 11 development supposedly saw the withdrawal of all Chinese involvement in October 2019. In reality, though, China is still intimately involved in its development and is looking to further scale up its activities following the inauguration of Joe Biden as U.S. President on 20 January. Along with completing the crucial Goreh-Jask pipeline oil export route by the end of the current Iranian calendar year (ending on 20 March 2021), building out its value-added petrochemicals production to at least 100 million metric tons per year by 2022, and ramping up production from its hugely oil-rich West Karoun cluster of oil fields to at least 1 million barrels per day (bpd) within the next two years, optimising the natural gas production from its South Pars gas field is a top priority for Iran. With an estimated 14.2 trillion cubic metres (Tcm) of gas reserves in place plus 18 billion barrels of gas condensate, South Pars already accounts for around 40 per cent of Iran’s total estimated 33.8 tcm of gas reserves – mostly located in the southern Fars, Bushehr, and Hormozgan regions – and about 80 per cent of its gas production.
The 3,700-square kilometre (sq.km) South Pars sector of the 9,700-square km basin shared with Qatar (in the form of the 6,000-square km North Dome) is also critical to Iran’s overall strategy to sustain natural gas production across the country of at least 1 billion cubic metres per day (Bcm/d), with Phase 11’s target production capacity being 57 million cubic metres per day (mcm/d), and to its corollary plans to become a world-leader in the liquefied natural gas (LNG) market. Read more…..
Chart of the Day
Icarus TV
In an interview with FRANCE 24, renowned economist and policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs calls for a new American foreign policy that no longer strives to dominate the Middle East. “We’ve been at failed war after war, spending trillions of dollars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Libya. It’s been disaster after disaster.
