After several months of delay, the contract for development of South Pars phases 17 and 18, worth 2.049 billion dollars, was signed here Sunday night between the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) and members of the tender winner consortium.
The winner consortium included Petropars, Oil Industrial Engineering and Construction Company (OIEC), and Iran Offshore Engineering and Construction (IOEC) companies.
OIEC and Petropars have shares of 50 and 29 percent in the contract respectively while IOEC has a share of 21 percent.
The total worth of the contract has been put at 2,049,240,740 dollars with a liability ceiling of up to 100 percent.
Addressing the ceremony, the Managing Director of Pars Oil and Gas Company, Akbar Torkan, said five phases of South Pars gas field development have been inaugurated so far.
Petropars Managing Director Gholam Reza Manouchehri also said the project was implemented during a 52-month period, adding gas production in Iran's South Pars currently exceeds that of Qatar.
He said development of phases 17 and 18 will bring some two billion dollars annual income for the country.
The goals behind the development plan of South Pars phases 17 and 18 include a daily production of 50 million cubic meters of refined gas for the cross-country network and a daily production of 70 cu.ft of ethane gas for delivery to the National Petrochemical Company to be used as feedstock for the ethylene plant.
The project also aims at annual production of one million tons of liquefied gas as well as 27 million barrels of gas condensate for export and daily production of 400 tons sulfur as byproduct of gas sweetening process.
The National Iranian Oil Company will finance the project and expenses will be returned through export of liquefied gas and gas condensates.
The two phases include drilling of two platforms with minimum equipment to control from the land each having 12 production wells.
The wells, each with an average daily production of 100 million cu.ft, can be increased to 15.
Two 32-inch undersea pipelines each 105 km long to transfer produced liquids from platforms to the Assalouyeh refinery as well as a 4.5-inch pipeline for transferring chemicals used to control and freeze are among other installations of the project.