Iran Restores Gas Production at Three South Pars Platforms After Israeli Attacks

Iran restored gas production at three offshore platforms in the South Pars gasfield after Israeli attacks disrupted output by damaging onshore processing facilities, the Pars Oil and Gas Company said Sunday.

Touraj Dehqani, the head of the Pars Oil and Gas Company, told state media that the platforms themselves had not been damaged and that “production had to be stopped because there was no possibility of receiving and processing the produced gas onshore.”

akhbar-rooz

Dehqani said the restored output from the three platforms was being routed to other processing plants in the region while repairs continued at damaged facilities, including the Phase 14 refinery.

The South Pars gasfield is located off the southern coast of Iran’s Bushehr province and is shared with Qatar, with the Qatari side called the North Dome or North Field, according to the accounts in the reports.

In a separate report, Mohsen Paknejad, the Minister of Oil, told reporters that a daily gas production record of 730 million cubic meters from the South Pars joint field was registered.

Multiple reports tied the restart to the fact that Israeli strikes hit onshore infrastructure in Iran’s Bushehr province, leaving offshore platforms operational but unable to send gas for processing.

Touraj Dehqani said the platforms were taken offline because onshore facilities that receive and process the gas they produce were damaged, and that “Gas production has resumed at three offshore platforms in the South Pars natural gas field that were halted despite not being damaged.”

Al Jazeera

He also described rerouting as a way to use maximum available capacity at active refineries while reconstruction work at the Phase 14 refinery continued “with full force,” according to the accounts.

Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi said the resumption was “significant both symbolically and practically” for Iran, and he added that “Iran is trying to send a message that it is trying to rebuild the targeted facilities.”

As repairs continued at damaged facilities, the reports said the restored platforms’ output was redirected to other gas-processing plants in the region while debris removal operations continued at stricken sites.

The restart came as the BBC described broader consequences from attacks on Iran and Qatar’s energy facilities, saying gas prices in Europe rose by about 25 percent in early trading and that gas prices in Europe were more than double what they were before the United States and Israel attacked Iran.

The BBC quoted commodities editor Matthew Fawaz of The Economist saying the attack on Qatar’s gas facilities “makes a rapid restart unlikely,” and it added that those facilities supply about a fifth of the world’s LNG supply.

The BBC also reported that the Khatam al-Anbia Headquarters warned that if Iran’s fuel, energy, gas and economic infrastructure are attacked again, “they will strike a heavy blow at the source of this aggression.”

In parallel, Al Jazeera reported that US President Donald Trump’s administration maintained a blockade of Iranian ports as part of a pressure campaign to get Iran to agree to a deal to end the war, while Iran’s chief negotiator said Tehran would not agree to any deal with Washington unless it secures Iran’s full rights.

Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi said the reopening of South Pars was an “important first step forward,” but he added that exporting its energy would depend on whether Iran could succeed after the attacks.