The first vessel of Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) unit has entered Iran's territorial waters to recover oil from the giant South Pars Gas Field in the south of the country, said the managing director of Petro Iran Development Company (PEDCO).
Roham Qassemi said, "The $300-million FPSO unit was built in Singapore and will be deployed above the South Pars' oil layer in the near future."
FPSO is a floating vessel used by the offshore oil and gas industry for the production and processing of hydrocarbons, and for the storage of oil. The vessel is designed to receive hydrocarbons produced by itself or from nearby platforms or subsea template, process them, and store oil until it can be offloaded onto a tanker or, less frequently, transported through a pipeline.
The vessel is now en route to its operational location in the giant energy hub, he added, noting that several wells have been drilled in the oil layer of South Pars to extract crude oil from the shared field.
The South Pars, whose development has been divided into 28 phases, is located in the Persian Gulf straddling the maritime border between Iran and Qatar.
The Iranian section of the field is estimated to contain 14 trillion cubic meters of gas and 18 billion barrels of condensates in place.
