'Launching platform fixes Iran's Caspian share at 18 %'

The Iranian share of the Caspian Sea is factually fixed at 18 per cent by launching the Amir Kabir Semi-submersible platform at a 250km distance offshore, Fars News Agency reported on Tuesday.

Iran launched the Amir Kabir drilling platform into Caspian Sea water in 2009 and started to discover oil and gas reserves after several unsuccessful well digging.

The agency claims that Iran bought seismologic information from Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan about Caspian Sea to discover oil and gas reserves and around 10, 000 square meters Seismologic operations in Caspian sea water were with the cooperation of some foreign companies, but executive operations have carried out by Iran's North Drilling company operating the Amir Kabri drilling platform.

Construction of Amir Kabri platform, under Switzerland's GVA family platform licence has been implemented. Switzerland's GVA and Iran's Sadra Company won a bid to start construction of the platform. In addition, a drilling operation control system at this platform technically belongs to the Norwegians, whose company, Maritime Hydraulic held training sessions for Iranian oil workers.

The platform type is GVA 4000 and according to GVA official website this kind of platforms can only drill.

The Iranian Oil Ministry announced in December 2011 that Iran could discover huge gas reserves (1.4 trillion cubic meters) in a 700-metre depth of the Caspian Sea. Then on May 10 it was announced that this field has a huge (eight billion barrels) oil reserves as well. Iran says the oil crude deposit in this (Sardar Jangal) field is worth $50 billion reserves.

Iran has drilled one 700-metre depth well in the Caspian Sea, but the Amir Kabir drilling platform is semi-submersible and can only be involved in a discovery operation, not oil and gas production, according to GVA official website.

According to official announcements, NDCO's engineers are currently drilling in depths of 750 metres, at a 250 km distance to the north of the coast.

Iran has neither a pipeline nor FPSO in the Caspian Sea to carry oil from the field to the shore, but Tehran says that it is preparing to use a FPSO to produce oil initially.

A floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) unit is a floating vessel used by the offshore oil and gas industry for the processing of hydrocarbons and for storage of oil. According to Iranian oil officials, producing 120,000 bpd of oil is possible from Sardar Jangal by drilling 30 wells.

The littoral states (Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Turkmenistan and Iran) signed the Framework Convention for the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Caspian Sea in November 2003.

In July 1998, Russia and Kazakhstan signed an agreement on the delimitation of the northern part of the Caspian Sea in order to exercise sovereign rights for subsoil use.

On Nov. 29, 2001 and Feb. 27, 2003, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan signed an agreement on the delimitation of the Caspian Sea. Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan and Russia signed an agreement on the delimitation of adjacent sections of the Caspian Sea on May 14, 2003.


/Trend/