Overview

Iran’s Pars Oil & Gas Company is exploring and developing the offshore South Pars field, which borders with Qatar’s North Dome gas field in the Gulf, about 100km from the country’s southern coastline.

The South Pars/ North Dome gas field is 9,700km squared in size. South Pars sits within Iran’s territorial waters, and the field is 3,700 sq km in size, with proven gas reserves of 350 trillion cubic metres, which is 6 per cent of the world total and half of Iran’s total reserves.

Phases 17 and 18 of the project closely resemble phases 15 and 16. The scope of work for the gas processing plant includes:

• Inlet facilities
• Sour water stripper
• Gas sweetening
• Back up stabilisation
• Condensate stabilisation
• Propane refrigeration
• Ethane removal
• Caustic regeneration
• Export gas compression and metering
• Propane treatment unit
• NGL fractionation
• Butane treatment unit
• Sulphur recovery unit and tail gas treatment
• Ethane decarbonisation and dehydration utilities and supporting facilities:
• MEG regeneration
• Diesel system
• Gas dehydration packages
• Cooling water system and distribution network
• Electrical generation and distribution network
• Flares and blowdown
• Steam and condensate and distribution network
• Utilities and offsite drain system
• Fuel gas system and distribution network
• Instrument air service
• Condensate storage and export
• Nitrogen generation system, network and integration
• Sulphur storage and solidification
• Sea water supply intake distribution network
• Propane refrigerant storage unit
• Sea water desalination distribution network
• Chemical storage
• Water polishing
• Propane storage and export
• Potable water
• Butane storage and export
• Waste effluent disposal and network
• Propane loading facilities
• Fire water system
• Butane loading facilities

The offshore element of phases 17 and 18 includes the construction of four platforms, the laying of various subsea pipelines and the drilling of 44 wells.

Once in production, the development will produce 50m cubic metres a day of treated natural gas, 1m tonnes a year of LPG for export, 80,000 b/d of condensate for export, 1m tonnes a year of ethane for use as feedstock and 800 tonnes a day of sulphur for export.