960401

Iran gas project

to boost oilfield

to go online

TEHRAN: A major Iranian gas project that will help maintain future production capacity at one of Iran's key oilfields will go online next week, the official news agency IRNA said on Friday.

It quoted the Dalan and Aghar project manager, identified only as Hossein-Nejad, as saying a 330-km (205-mile) pipeline transporting natural gas from the fields in the southern Fars province for injection in the Marun oilfield in the oil-rich Khuzestan province would go onstream next week.

The Marun oilfield, located near the southwestern city of Ahvaz, is Iran's third largest field with a capacity to produce 600,000 barrels per day (bpd).

But it has been in production for nearly 30 years and will need gas-injection facilities to boost pressure and fight off a fall in output, a situation also faced by several other Iranian onshore fields which provide nearly 90 percent of the country's total oil production of 3.6 million bpd.

Hossein-Nejad said the pipeline was the first phase of a larger project which will include refinement and transfer of gas to various destinations.

He put the estimated cost of the project at 700 billion rials ($400 million), saying 500 billion rials of that had been spent in the past Iranian year that ended on March 19.

He said the Dalan and Aghar gas fields had reserves of 6.8 trillion and 6 trillion cubic feet (2.07 trillion and 1.83 trillion cubic metres) respectively.

Iran has about 740 trillion cubic feet (21 trillion cubic metres) of gas reserves, 15 percent of the world's total, placing it in second place in the world after Russia.-Reuter