South Pars, in addition to being the world’s largest gas field, possesses oil layers which had previously remained dormant and untouched.
Qatar has been recovering oil from the South Pars Oil Field for several years, but Iran had missed the opportunity because of lack of technical equipment like Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) unit sanctioned by the US and its allies.
In the previous Iranian government, in view of sanctions removal, an FPSO unit was purchased and deployed to the layer and in March 2017, Deputy Head of NIOC for Development and Engineering Affairs Gholamreza Manuchehri announced that that the oil recovery from South Pars had kicked off.
Oil recovery from the oil layer of the offshore gas field was made possible after NIOC dispatched an FPSO unit which received crude oil through a 12-inch pipeline and transferred the purified product to export tankers.
One oil recovery from SPOL had reached a satisfactory level, exports of crude oil was launched and reports indicated that main destinations for the Iranian product were Asian countries.
South Pars, a supergiant gas field Iran shares with Qatar in Persian Gulf waters, is estimated to contain over 14 billion barrels of oil in its oil layer.