December 25 2020
Years late, the Islamic Republic finally began drilling the first well in Phase 11 of the South Pars gasfield on December 14.
A French firm and then a Chinese firm held the contract for the project but neither advanced the work very much and both dropped out after President Trump re-imposed sanctions two years ago. The project was then turned over to an Iranian firm.
Phase 11 is the largest of 28 phases of South Pars, the Iranian section of the world’s largest gasfield, which is shared with Qatar.
In November 2016, Iran signed a $4.8 billion agreement with a consortium led by France’s Total along with the China National Petroleum Corp. (CNPC) and Petropars, a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Co. (NIOC).
Development work in the field came to a halt in 2018 when Total announced it would withdraw from the project over difficulties of working under American sanctions on Iran.
China’s CNPC, the second largest stakeholder in the development project, took it over but did very little work and eventually withdrew, too.
That forced Iran to award the entire project to the minority shareholder Petropars, an Iranian energy company.
A total of 12 wells are to be dug at Phase 11. Production from the wells is due to reach a maximum of 2 billion cubic feet of gas per day or the equivalent of 370,000 barrels of oil per day. The gas is to be fed into Iran’s national gas network.