Iran to launch phase 10 of south pars gas field

Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qassemi announced that Phase 10 of Iran's giant South Pars Oil and Gas field will come on stream within the next 30 days and will lower concerns about a possible shortage of gas during this winter."The liquid fuel reserves for winter have been filled up while they are even more than the last year," Qassemi said, addressing a meeting at Tehran's Chamber on Tuesday. "Phase 9 of the South Pars has joined the grid and phase 10 will joint the network by the next month," he continued. "We will not have any concern about shortage of gas next year since phases 15, 16, 17 and 18 of the South Pars will add 200 million cubic meters to the country's gas production capacity," he added. Earlier, Qassemi had announced that Iran plans to increase its daily production capacity in the giant South Pars Gas Field to more than 290 million cubic meters by the end of the current Iranian year (March 2012). "So far, the production capacity has amounted to over 275 million cubic meters per day and it will surpass 290 million cubic meters by the end of this (Iranian) year," Public Relations Office of the Pars Oil and Gas Company quoted Qassemi as saying. Last month, Iran announced that all the phases of the South Pars gas field would come on stream by October 2015. The South Pars gas field is located in the Persian Gulf, north of Iran's maritime border with Qatar. The Iranian share, which is divided into 24 phases, has about 14 trillion cubic meters of gas, or about eight percent of the total world reserves, and more than 18 billion barrels of liquefied natural gas resources. Iran has 137.6 billion barrels of proven oil reserves and 29.61 trillion cubic meters of proven gas reserves, ranking second in the world in both oil and gas reserves.