Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct.29/ Trend G.Mehdi/
Iran needs as much as 60 trillion rials (about $4.9 billion) to be invested annually in its gas sector to boost output to 1.3 billion cubic meters by March 2016, the Shana News Agency quoted National Iranian Gas Company's managing director Javad Owji as saying.
"To realize the goal, infrastructures such as refineries, transfer lines, and pressure boost stations should be expanded," Owji said.
Iran plans to increase gas production from the giant offshore South Pars field to 800 million cubic meters a day by 2016, higher than Qatar's output of 550 million-560 million cu m/d from the shared field.
Before the end of the fifth five-year development plan [in March 2016], gas production from the South Pars gas field will reach 800 million cu m/d and this is higher than Qatar's production from this shared field," Mousa Souri, managing director of the Pars Oil and Gas Company, said on October 14.
Iran's total gas production currently stands at 650 million cu m/d.
Souri, whose company is in charge of developing South Pars, said several phases, including 12, 17 and 18, will start production in the current Iranian year that ends March 20, 2013.
Each standard phase of South Pars is designed to produce 25 million cu m/d of gas, 40,000 b/d of condensates and 200 mt of sulfur among other products. Some phases such as phase 12 are equal to three standard phases.
The South Pars gas field is shared by Iran and Qatar. The Iranian share, which is divided into 29 phases, has about 14 trillion cubic meters of gas, or about eight percent of total world reserves, and more than 18 billion barrels of liquefied natural gas.
With 34 trillion cubic meters of natural gas reserves, Iran has the world's second-largest natural gas reserves after Russia.
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