TEHRAN, Aug 23 (Shana) � Minister of Petroleum, Bijan Zanganeh, will visit South Pars as of Thursday, August 25, to inspect high priority projects in phases of SouthPars gas field and certain petrochemical projects.

During his two-day stay in Boushehr Province, Zanganeh will meet with senior South Pars oil and gas directors and a number of Boushehr Province's officials.

Zanganeh had told a TV program on Saturday that SouthPars gas field will be operational either late this year or early next year.

"When I started work at Ministry of Petroleum, daily production from the (SouthPars) field was 240 billion cubic meters/day, which reached 240 million cubic meters/day late last year. Such an increase was made possible as phase 12, functioning conventionally equal to three phases, as well as phases 15, 16 and 17 came on stream."

He hoped that this year, phases 18 and 19 (serving with the capacity equal to two phases conventionally), as well as phases 20 and 21 will be on stream. "As the phases come on stream, gas production from South Pars joint field will reach 500 cubic meters or a little a bit more than the figure.

Late this year and early next year, Iran's extraction amount will equal that of Qatar but overall, Qatar's extraction will be more than twice that of Iran and that's what Iran has lost, said Zanganeh, adding that it should be kept in mind that for a project to be implemented, time is as much important as money and capital.

He said the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) is more than $50 billion indebted due to the same reason and due to delay in commission of SouthPars and other projects.

The minister said, "The debt is our due, while when developing the first 10 phases, we had not the least debt and all of them were timely implemented and settled, while the rest of the phases took more than 10 years to be developed. $50 billion in debt has irreversibly been imposed on us but at any rate it was something inevitably happened."

By SHANA