Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 24
By Fatih Karimov – Trend
Iran’s South Pars platform 18B has come on stream, Hassan Boyeri, operator of the field's phases 17-18 said, IRNA news agency reported Oct. 24.
Through the platform, a daily gas supply of 14 million cubic meters will go into the cross-country distribution network.
The start-up operation of the platform started after the well No.2 of the platform became operational, Boyeri said, adding that the extracted gas will be sent onshore refinery of the phase soon.
At the moment operations are underway for installing spools of the 18- inch pipeline which will connect platform 18B to 18A to send the extracted gas to the refinery, he said.
Two main platforms of the phases 17 and 18 of the South Pars gas field were already launched in 2015 and the last platform, namely 17B will be inaugurated before March 2017.
The 17B platform has been loaded at Bandar Abbas on Oct. 18 and will be installed soon.
Iran has produced $2 billion worth of products from the phases 17 and 18 of the South Pars gas field since it became operational in January 2015.
Phase 17 and 18 is set to produce 56.5 mcm/d of sour gas, 75,000 bpd of gas condensates, one million tons a year of liquefied gas, one million tons a year of ethane and 400 tons a day of sulfur.
Iranian side of South Pars, located in southern region, is divided into 24 development phases. The field contains 40 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, of which one third belongs to Iran and the remains to Qatar.
Currently, Iran produces 430 mcm/d of gas from this field and planned to increase this volume by 100 mcm/d by March 2017.