Pars Oil and Gas Company (POGC) has announced that Iran has increased the production capacity of the offshore South Pars gas field by 20 per cent since March 2011
Mohammadreza Zahiri, head of POGC, said that the company, which is a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), had also increased the number of drilling rigs in the South Pars gas field from nine to 15 over the course of a year.
Zahiri said, "The POGC has particularly focused its development activities in phases 11, 12, 17, 18 and 19 of South Pars."
Currently 18 types of drilling services are provided by Iranian companies, eliminating Iran's need to rely on foreign companies, Zahiri added.
Covering an area of 3,700 sq km, South Pars, which is part of a larger gas field shared with Qatar, is divided into 24 phases and holds about 14 trillion cu m of gas, or about eight per cent of the total world reserves, and more than 18bn barrels of liquefied natural gas resources.
