Iran’s extraction from South Pars gas field tops 1.8 tcm

The Iranian giant company Petropars said in a statement Sunday that natural gas recovery from the South Pars gas filed had reached a total of 1.8 trillion cubic meters since production started in the field in 2002.

According to a report by the Press TV website, the company said the field had also been responsible for 2.2 billion barrels of Iran's output of condensates, a light form of crude, over the past 19 years.

Petropars also said the value of the natural gas and condensates produced in South Pars would equal to $335 billion based on gas prices in 2017 (1 cm=$0.18). That comes against an investment of around $80 billion Iran has carried out over the years to develop all but one of the 28 phases of the South Pars.

Shared between Iran and Qatar, the South Pars-North Dome Gas-Condensate field is by the far the largest natural gas filed in the world.

Iran accelerated development works in South Pars in 2013, hoping that it could tap foreign expertise and investment in anticipation of a major international deal on its nuclear program that could lead to the lifting of international sanctions on the country.

However, the nuclear deal signed between Iran and world powers in 2015 crumbled in 2018 after the United States pulled out of the agreement and reimposed unilateral sanctions on Tehran.

Major oil and gas companies like France’s Total and China’s CNPC left South Pars under pressure from the US, leaving Iran on its own to develop major phases of the field.