Iran’s South Pars field begins oil production
The Ras Lanuf Oil and Gas Company. Ras Lanuf was one of the ports damaged in previous rounds of fighting.
Oil wells at Iran’s South Pars gasfield started production for the first time yesterday, Iranian oil ministry news agency SHANA reported. South Pars is a part of the world’s largest gasfield which Iran shares with Qatar. South Pars also has more than 14 billion barrels of oil reserves, it said.
Gholamreza Manouchehri, deputy head of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), said yesterday that the wells are expected to initially produce 5,000 barrels per day (bpd) and that should increase to 35,000 bpd within a week, SHANA said.
“We are hoping that within 30 to 45 days we will have the first export shipment from the oil layer at South Pars,” Manouchehri said.
Separately, Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh issued a directive that no managers or supervisors in Iran’s oil industry can change positions until after presidential elections on May 19, the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) reported yesterday. to sell oil independently, but have been blocked by international sanctions which remain in place.
Oil facilities are protected by the Petroleum Facilities Guard (PFG) but PFG units often operate independently or for a particular political faction.
Sanalla said a neutral PFG should have a role, “but under the authority and real management of NOC”.
“Putting the PFG under the NOC would, we think, go a long way to removing Libya’s oil assets as an object of military competition,” he said.