Significance of Oil and Gas Industry in Iran

After the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry and the establishment of the National Iranian Oil Company, the exploratory activities of Iran were gradually escalated. Upon the Islamic revolution and cutting the influence of the foreign contractors, the exploring and exploiting operations of the Iranian petroleum and gas resources were assigned to the Iranian employees and managers.

In the second post-Revolution decade, the exploratory activities gradually accelerated such that oil exploration increased up to two times higher than the previous period. Discovering the South Pars gasfield is one of the important explorations of this decade, which is the largest gasfield in the world.

South Pars gasfield is located in the common maritime boundary between Iran and Qatar in the Persian Gulf and 115 km from the southern coast of Iran. The area of this gasfield amounts to 9700 km2, of which about 3700 km2 is located in the seas of I.R. IRAN. This gigantic gasfield includes approximately 8% of the gas of the world and about 47% of the gas reserves of the country. Even though, from the geographical viewpoint, one-third of this gasfield is located in the geographical boundaries of the Islamic Republic of Iran, extracting gas from this field is like a competition. The quantity of extraction depends on the sum of investment and the extraction potential of the two parties from this common field. 

The Islamic Republic of Iran included the exploitation of these Heavensent energy reserves of this area in its plans in 1998-99. Therefore, it predicted that 24 development phases are required to extract the oil and gas resources from the South Pars field. Asaluyeh and Tombak ports located at 270 km and 200 km from the southeast coast of Bushehr were selected as the coastal area to create land installations and develop this gasfield.

Developing South Pars gasfield was carried out to supply the increasing demand for natural gas, add to the oil fields, export gas and gas condensates, plus supply the petrochemicals feedstock. Completion of the aforesaid 24 phases and extraction of more than 700,000,000 m3 gas per day lead to enormous benefits for the country and accelerated the accomplishment of Iran's oil and gas industry’s perspective for the horizon of 2025. 

During this period, upon the increase of the economic sanctions imposed on the country, foreign companies and investors such as Total, Petronas, Statoil, Gazprom, Eni, Daelim, Hyundai, and so many other foreign corporations that participated in the construction of the initial phases of South Pars ended their cooperation in constructing these field and left the country with a backlog of work and unfinished projects. In this situation, Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarter, the specialized petroleum, gas, and petrochemicals holding, and the affiliated companies took on the responsibility of constructing phases15 and 16 as the specialized companies to execute the petroleum, gas, and petrochemicals projects considering a mission-oriented approach and on the basis of the strategic plan of construction. Therefore, in accordance with a national trust, the contract of phases 15 and 16 of South Pars was entered into by and between the National Iranian Oil Company and Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarter in June-July 2006.

Per this contract, developing phases 15 and 16 of South Pars included production platforms, marine pipelines, land refinery as EPC were assigned to the affiliated complexes of the Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarter. This complex undertook to carry out all stages of engineering, procuring, supplying, executing, installing, pre-implementing, implementing, as well as testing its operation.

Taking into account the good performance on this complex in executing phases 15 and 16, and the satisfaction of the employer, these phases turn into a model to execute the remaining phases of South Pars. Thus, the execution of phases 13, 22, 23, and 24 was assigned to the Headquarter.