Reports published in the local media on Saturday showed that the state-run Petropars company had started the roll-up operation for a massive drilling platform at Farzad B gas field, which is known as Arabiyah in Saudi Arabia.
Farzad B lies 85 kilometers to the east of the Iranian port city of Bushehr and holds 23 trillion cubic feet (over 650 billion cubic meters) of natural gas.
Saudi Arabia has been pumping gas from its side of the field since 2016, when a Canadian-led consortium brought output to 1.2 billion cubic feet (nearly 34 million cubic meters) per day.
However, development on the Iranian side of the field had been stalled since 2014, when a consortium of three Indian state-owned companies abandoned the project because of foreign sanctions on Iran.
Iran then decided to use the services of domestic companies for a project that could play a major role in meeting the country’s rising energy demand.
A Petropars contractor said the WHP1 platform planned for installation at Farzad B would soon be transported to the project site near the maritime border between Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Keyvan Tarighati said Petropars and the Iranian Offshore Engineering and Construction Company (IOEC) have jointly built the 2,650-ton platform, adding that the structure was completed using 28,000 person-days of work, including a record of nearly 113,000 inches of welding.
Petropars CEO Hamidreza Saghafi also said that the launch of Farzad B would add 1 trillion cubic feet (over 28.3 million cubic meters) of gas to Iran’s daily production.
Saghafi said that some 75% of the field’s reserves lie on the Iranian side of the maritime border with Saudi Arabia, describing Farzad B as one of the most complex development projects in Iran’s petroleum industry.
Press TV