A decade after signing of the development of South Pars oil field, the first processing platform was installed with laudable efforts of indigenous experts. Currently, Iran produces no single barrel of oil from this shared oil field. However, Iran had signed with Qatari partner an agreement to provide FPSO oil tank to extract, refine, and reserve oil from the field.
Qatar however has worked to raise extraction and production of oil from shared field, and now their figure has exceeded 525,000 barrels per day.
The processing superstructure was installed in a substructure of gigantic weight of 1300 tons. The substructure, together with its support ballasts, weighs 2800 tons and has been constructed in metric aspects of 26 meters in 28 meters with a height of 79 meters. The superstructure weighs 890 tons and was constructed in metric aspects of 32 meters in 35 meters and a height of 20 meters. The platform has the capacity of processing 35,000 barrels of oil per day from 7 oil wells drilled in South Pars filed. The platform installation will definitely accelerate Iran’s production of oil from the shared oil field, and it is expected to enter operation by the third quarter of 2016.
The preparing, loading, and carrying of the platform were started April 14, 2015 and its preparation for installation ended April 21, 2015. The floater left Bandar Abbas to South Pars in a favorable weather condition.
Alireza Zeighami, the directing manager of South Pars oil field told reporters on Tuesday that the technical and operational conditions of the production of oil from South Pars were drastically different from other gas and oil fields. NIOC policies during the past decade never brought about positive results in producing oil from this shared oil field, while Qatari partner has nearly unilaterally produced oil up to the exhausting proportions.
They have in agenda a preliminary study to build a 250,000 giant refinery to process heavy oil produced in Al-Shahin field, and with the project done, the country will accelerate ever depleting the shared resources in the South Pars field. On the other side of the shores, producing even a single barrel of oil has become almost a dream for NIOC in the past decade.