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TEHRAN, Oct. 19 (Xinhua) -- Iran is in talks with Danish business conglomerate, Maersk Group, to extract oil from the world's largest gas field, a part of which is located in Iran and is referred to as South Pars, Press TV reported on Wednesday.
Negotiations have been held with Maersk for the development of the second phase of the South Pars oil layer, Deputy Managing Director of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC), Gholam-Reza Manuchehri, said here on Wednesday.
"Using modern technologies and horizontal drilling in view of the heaviness of the oil at the South Pars layer are the most important development scenarios for this oil field, which is shared with Qatar," Manuchehri said.
Reportedly, NIOC plans to drill 300 wells at the South Pars oil layer, which requires Improved Oil Recovery (IOR) and Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) technologies to reach crude oil.
Manuchehri said that such technologies are in the possession of a few international companies, with the Danish company considered to be a "powerful" candidate for development of the South Pars oil layer.
"Negotiations with the Danish company are underway but nothing is final yet," he said.
On Tuesday, visiting Deputy Managing Director of Maersk Paul Munk Andersen said that the Danish business conglomerate is ready to engage in Iran's oil industry, according to Iran's semi-official Fars news agency.
"We are ready for cooperation with Iranian companies to promote Iranian oil industry upstream sector," Andersen was quoted as saying by Fars.
On Wednesday, Manuchehri said Qatar is ahead of Iran in developing its share of oil layer and had already completed drilling of 300 wells which started production in 1991.
"Iran would need at least two thirds of this amount of drilling to increase production from the oil layer to 200,000 barrels per day over a period of 20 years," he said.
According to Press TV, Maersk Group is cooperating with Qatar in the shared field referred to as North Dome.
Manuchehri said the development of the South Pars oil layer is among the Iranian Oil Ministry's priorities, to be offered to foreign companies under Iran's new oil contract model.
Iranian companies are working on the first phase of the project and are expected to pump 35,000 barrels of oil a day before the end of the current Iranian calendar year in March 2017.
The South Pars/North Dome field is a natural gas condensate field located in the Persian Gulf. It is the world's largest gas field, shared between Iran and Qatar.
According to the International Energy Agency, the field holds an estimated 1,800 trillion cubic feet (51 trillion cubic meters) of in-situ natural gas and some 50 billion barrels of natural gas condensate.
The nuclear agreement reached between the world powers and Iran in July 2015 and was implemented in January has resulted in the lift of sanctions against Iran's energy sector and has raised hopes here to reengage the latter with the global economy and develop its energy resources.
In January, Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zangeneh said that Maersk is also interested in developing Iran's deepwater hydrocarbon reserves in the Caspian Sea.
The Danish company has already been involved in deepwater oil drilling the Caspian Sea for Azerbaijan. Maersk has also experience in building world-class FPSO vessels for floating oil and gas production, storage and offloading oil and gas, which Iran needs at the South Pars oil layer, he said.
Martin Beckman, a member from the German Wintershall Co. management board, had previously said that Iran is in dire need of investment and technology for its Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), and that efforts should be directed toward promoting the industry in Iran, said Fars news agency.
Meanwhile, PetroChina Company has announced that it is ready to help Iran with EOR within framework of the new model of oil contracts. EOR and IOR are technologies needed for enhanced oil recovery in Iran, it added.
