That last company was the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC), which held a contract for work developing Phase 11 of the 29-phase South Pars project.
CNPC was awarded the $4.7 billion contract in 2009, when it replaced Total of France, which was accused of stalling and not doing any work.
But CNPC now stands accused of stalling and not doing any work.
The Mehr news agency said CNPC had not even taken the most basic steps of fencing its work area or leveling the ground despite holding the contract for 1,130 days or just over three years.
All the other foreign firms that held contracts but were inactive were given deadlines to start work—and then fired when they failed to meet those deadlines.
The Trend news agency reported in June that Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi had given CNPC until Now Ruz to start work.
But CNPC didn’t wait for Now Ruz. Mehr said it has already pulled all its staff out of Asaluyeh, the Persian Gulf port city that is the base for work on the offshore South Pars gasfield.
Iranian firms have been assigned the contracts taken away from foreign firms. The Iranian firms are believed to have the required skills—many have worked on phases that are now completed—but it is not clear how they will get much of the hi-tech gear required at South Pars or where they will find all the capital required to pay for that equipment.
The Oil Ministry says it has allocated more than $26 billion for South Pars development in the current Persian year. That is equal to almost one-third of all of Iran’s oil sales revenues in 2011, before the new EU and US sanctions pushed down Iranian exports and when oil prices were higher than now.
Meanwhile, Iran continues to lay down its sixth cross-country gas pipeline, this one headed from the southern gasfields to the Turkish border, from which it is intended to pipe the gas onward to Europe. However, the EU decided a few years ago that it would not import any Iranian gas until the nuclear issue is resolved.
The Islamic Republic consistently says it is putting very substantial effort and capital into beefing up its production capacity for natural gas. But the customers for that added capacity remain elusive. At this juncture, it can only deliver gas via pipeline, which limits its options. And the only foreign buyer of any quantity of Iranian natural gas is Turkey, which is angry over the price Iran is charging.
Iran says it will soon be able to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) by tanker to distant customers, but its limited access to the high tech gear needed to liquefy gas raises question marks over that goal.