Helium extraction from Iran´s South Pars on agenda

Teheran, March 14 - Neftegaz.RU. The managing director of NIOC said that the company plans to start extraction of helium from South Pars gas field (Iran shares with Qatar in the Persian Gulf) in the next Iranian calendar year (starts on March 21).
Mohsen Khojasteh-Mehr explained:

• Helium gas is rare in the world and has special uses
• The field that has the most helium gas in the world is South Pars and we plan to start work on the extraction of helium gas, which is done for the 1^st time
• I hope that South Pars phase 11 will be developed in the next year

Iran has massive helium resources, and it should not meet its needs by importing the odorless and non-toxic gas from Qatar.

In mid-January, the official had said that digging operation has expedited in phase 11.
Khojasteh-Mehr said:

• Developing and completing phase 11 is among the main priorities of NIOC
• We are now in the stage of digging wells in this phase and some part of gas extraction from phase 11 will start in the next [Iranian calendar] year
• Of course, some measures were made that gas extraction will start sooner than previously planned

Earlier in January, Petropars’ former Managing Director Hamidreza Masoudi had announced the implementation of 2 new contracts which would accelerate the development of the mentioned phase.

When fully developed, the South Pars phase 11 project will have a production capacity of 2 billion cubic feet per day or 370,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day.
The produced gas will be fed into Iran's gas network.

South Pars is the world’s largest gas field, covering an area of 3,700 sq. km of Iran’s territorial waters.
The giant field is estimated to contain a significant amount of natural gas, accounting for about 8% of the world’s reserves, and approximately 18 billion barrels of condensate.