DUBAI: Iran's Pars Oil and Gas Company hopes to pull a $40 million gas platform support structure from the bottom of the Gulf after it sank in an installation attempt, Iran's Mehr news agency reported.
The heavy metal support jacket, one of four planned for phase 13 of Iran's South Pars gas field project, plunged to a depth of 80 metres on Tuesday morning, and bad weather is delaying efforts to fish it out.

"Bad water and weather conditions have presented difficulties for recovering this giant structure," Pars official Sepehr Sepehri was quoted by Mehr as saying on Wednesday.

"As soon as sea conditions in the region improve, steps to recover this (structure) at a depth of 80 metres in the waters of the Persian Gulf will begin," he told Mehr on Tuesday.

State-run Iranian Marine Industrial Co, or Sadra, was working with Pars, a subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company, when an accident on the floating installation platform caused the support structure to sink.

Sepehri said crisis groups had been set up on the site and in Tehran but did not give any indication of how the jacket weighing over 1,000 tonnes might be recovered.

The multi-phased South Pars project to develop Iran's part of the world's largest gas field has been set back by a withdrawal of international energy companies and technology suppliers due to sanctions on trade with Iran.

According to Pars, the Iranian portion of the gas field which it shares with Qatar, is estimated to contain some 14 trillion cubic metres of gas.

By Yahoo News

 

The Iran Project is not responsible for the content of quoted articles.