Iran (IMNA) - On Saturday, local media reported that state-run Petropars had initiated the roll-up operation for a large drilling platform at the Farzad B gas field, known as Arabiyah on the Saudi side. A worker from the Iranian Offshore Engineering and Construction Company (IOEC) was seen at the site as the platform was being prepared.
Farzad B, situated 85 kilometers east of the Iranian port city of Bushehr, contains an estimated 23 trillion cubic feet (over 650 billion cubic meters) of natural gas. Saudi Arabia has been extracting gas from its portion of the field since 2016, when a Canadian-led consortium reached an output of 1.2 billion cubic feet (nearly 34 million cubic meters) per day.
Development on the Iranian side, however, had been halted since 2014 after a consortium of three Indian state-owned firms withdrew from the project due to foreign sanctions on Iran. The country subsequently turned to domestic companies to advance work on a project seen as vital for meeting Iran’s growing energy needs.
A Petropars contractor announced that the WHP1 platform is expected to be transported soon to the project site near the Iran-Saudi maritime border. Keyvan Tarighati said the 2,650-ton structure, jointly built by Petropars and IOEC, required 28,000 person-days of labor and included nearly 113,000 inches of welding, marking a new record.
Petropars CEO Hamidreza Saghafi stated that once operational, Farzad B would add 1 trillion cubic feet (over 28.3 million cubic meters) of gas to Iran’s daily production. He added that around 75% of the field’s reserves are located on Iran’s side, describing Farzad B as one of the most complex development projects in the country’s petroleum sector.
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