TotalFinaElf's new natural gas treatment facility at Iran's Gulf town of Assaluyeh is ready for operation, an Iranian oil industry source said Thursday.
On Saturday, engineers will start pumping gas from the South Pars field near Qatar into the facility, which will then begin treating it at the first of four trains from January 15, the source said.
The initial throughput will be 13.5 million cubic meters (473 million cubic feet) per day, rising to 60 million cubic meters (2.1 billion cubic feet) at full capacity.
Plans are that by February 15, delivery will begin from the facility into the Iranian domestic gas network.
Iran, with the second-largest deposits of natural gas in the world after Russia, intends to use all the gas from South Pars for domestic consumption.
The South Pars field is estimated to have deposits of 13.5 trillion cubic metres (473 trillion cubic feet) of gas.
TotalFinaElf signed in 1997 the largest-ever gas development contract with Iran and has invested two billion dollars so far.
The French company, in association with Russia's Gazprom and Malaysia's Petronas, is developing phases two and three of the South Pars field.
The contract is on a buy-back basis, with TotalFinaElf's revenues to come from the forecast 80,000 barrels a day of condensates to be produced.
Once the current project is completing, which is expected to be during the course of 2002, TotalFinaElf could be awarded the contract for phase 12, for which it is in competition with BP and Eni – Tehran (AFP)
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
