Iran Looking For New Gas Reserves At South Pars

Pars Oil and Gas Company (POGC), a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company, has started drilling operations at the South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf in search of new hydrocarbon reserves.

The Pars Oil and Gas Company stated that the drilling of the new well was part of the development strategy for the South Pars field.

The strategy focuses on exploring the undeveloped areas of the field in a bid to find new hydrocarbon reserves and extend gas production.

The company stated that the drilling of an extension appraisal well in the northern part of the South Pars gas field aims to evaluate the hydrocarbon capacity of the areas outside the field’s current blocks and phases.

The head of POGC’s Oil and Gas Engineering Department Ali Akbar Majed said that the drilling of the SP-16 extension appraisal well was being done to determine the possibility of the field’s expansion. The drilling will be completed by the Iranian Offshore Engineering and Construction Company, which was hired to carry out these operations.

According to him, the exploration and making discoveries on undeveloped parts of the South Pars joint field in an attempt to locate hydrocarbon reserves is one of the solutions outlined in a plan developed to maintain the field’s gas production. During the assessment and search for new reserves, which is the objective of this drilling campaign as well, more than one well will be drilled.

“The SP-16 well, whose appraisal objectives and evaluation has been determined in cooperation with the exploration department of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), is the first of four wells planned for drilling and evaluation of areas outside the current blocks of the field,” Majed claimed.

As for South Pars, it lies on the territorial border between Iran and the State of Qatar in the Persian Gulf. The South Pars gas field covers an area of 3,745 square miles. Iran’s territorial waters house 1,430 square miles, while the remaining 2,315 square miles, named the North Dome, are situated in Qatar’s territorial waters.

According to available data, the Iranian portion is estimated to hold almost 500 trillion cubic feet of gas and some 18 billion barrels of gas condensates.

This amounts to around 7.5 percent of the world's gas reserves and half of Iran’s gas reserves. The development of this massive field is divided into 24 phases to produce around 28 billion cubic feet of gas per day.

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