Viewpoint

Energy-Rich Iran on the Threshold of Economic Bonanza Despite Sanctions

Date: 17 March 2019 - 21:12

News ID: ۶۴۳۳۷

By: Kayhan Int’l Staff Writer

The inauguration yesterday of four new phases of South Pars, the world’s largest gas field in the strategic hydrocarbon processing region of Asaluyeh in Bushehr Province by President Hassan Rouhani, will increase Iran’s gas production capacity by up to 110 million cubic meters per day.
Iran, which shares South Pars with the Persian Gulf emirate of Qatar, would be operating 27 phases by next March, and expects to exceed gas production at this field by 750 million cubic meters per day by late 2019.
According to Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh Iran is all set to produce 950 million cubic meters of gas per day in the next year.
The steady progress of the Islamic Republic, thanks to indigenous expertise, is indeed a blessing in disguise for the nation, which is the target of the illegal economic sanctions of the roguish US president, Donald Trump.
Actually, the development of Iranian industries, including petrochemicals, is a slap on the face of Washington and indication of the fact that the enemy will not succeed in its nefarious plans.
Although France’s Total and the China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) suspended investment in phase 11 of South Pars last year after the US threatened to impose sanctions on companies that do business in Iran, there is neither shortage of expertise nor funds to carry on the projects in Aaluyeh, over twelve kilometers of whose coastline on the Persian Gulf is dotted with various petrochemical plants, whose exports have increased by more than 40 percent this year.
Iran’s proven natural gas reserves are about 1,201 trillion cubic feet or 17.8% of the entire world’s total reserves, making it the world’s second largest country after Russia in terms of gas deposits. In other words, Iran’s gas reserves represent the equivalent of about 205 billion barrels of oil.
To protect its rich resources as well as to ensure the welfare of its citizens, who throughout the length and breadth of the country have been provided access to piped gas, Iran maintains highly alert security forces, both on land and in the waters of the Persian Gulf, in addition to a sophisticated air defence umbrella.
This has frustrated the devilish designs of the US and its agents, who had plotted to deprive the Islamic Republic of its ability to increase natural gas exports, and part of the plots were the crises created in Syria and Iraq, which Iran decisively helped defeat.
Iran, which operates the flourishing 2,577 km long Tabriz-Ankara pipeline for gas supply to Turkey, has embarked on ambitious projects, such as the proposed Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline (the Friendship Pipeline) running from the South Pars Gas field towards Europe via Lebanon’s Mediterranean coast.
The planned 5,600 km pipeline, when complete, will also benefit Turkey, and though the Swiss energy company "Elektrizitätsgesellschaft Laufenburg” breached its contract with Iran in October 2010 in the face of US pressures, the Islamic Republic is working on the project, following the agreement it signed with Iraq in June 2013 to fuel power plants in Baghdad and Diyala.
With the power and prestige of the legal governments of Iraq and Syria growing by the day and the terrorists on the run, this project may soon become feasible, much to the chagrin of Uncle Sam and the illegal Zionist regime.
The Islamic Republic of Iran believes in the collective development of the region, and is willing to share its rich natural resources with the neighbouring countries, including energy-starved Pakistan and India to its east.
True, there is delay for the moment, but the future is exceptionally bright, since economic terrorism of a fast declining power like rank outsider US, will not last long.