Will United States allow Iran to meet global gas shortage?

Qatar witnessed a prosperous start to 2021, first scoring a major political goal by restoring diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia and ending its almost 4-year long embargo. Qatar’s capacity to meet the global demand for LNG has elevated the Middle Eastern state into worldwide limelight.

The LNG price hike in Asia was a combination of 3 key factors – low temperatures, low spot cargo availability and persisting COVID-19 ramifications. All three were badly intertwined; low temperatures by themselves need not cause a market distortion if there is ample LNG availability in the market. Qatar’s competitors, due to their geographic location and previously concluded commercial commitments, could not reorient such volumes towards Asia.

The fact that Asia needed LNG urgently was further supported by the fact that January 2021 LNG arrivals have reached an all-time high of 28 million tons LNG. A whopping 23% of this came from Qatar and only 6% and 5%, respectively, from the United States and the Russian Federation.

Under the prevailing circumstances, the world has to find another dependable source of supply, which is Iran, to the utmost displeasure of United States and its Middle Easter allies. To save the world from tyranny, Iran must be allowed to sell its gas.

Lately, Managing Director of Pars Oil and Gas Company (POGC), responsible for developing Iran’s giant South Pars gas field, has said that the development of the mentioned field is nearly completed and all phases of the field will be fully operational in near future.

South Pars, which Iran shares with Qatar in the Persian Gulf waters, is currently divided into 24 standard offshore phases, the output of which is processed by 14 gas refineries on land.

South Pars gas field covers an area of 9,700 square kilometers, 3,700 square kilometers of which are in Iran’s territorial waters and the remaining 6,000 square kilometers, called North Dome, are situated in Qatar’s territorial waters.

The first train of the South Pars phase 14 Refinery is going to go operational early next Iranian calendar year, after which every three months another train will be inaugurated, and by the end of the next Iranian calendar year this refinery will be fully operational.

Underlining the reliance of domestic capacities and capabilities for the development of the mentioned field, it is worth noting that only 33% of the required equipment for this field was produced in Iran, but at present 75% of the necessary equipment has been indigenized.

Initially, the first two projects of the field, namely phase two and three and phase four and five, were carried out with the participation of France’s Total and Italy’s Eni, but after that the remaining phases were completed by the Iranian companies.

At the beginning of the work, five platforms were built abroad, but after that all the remaining 35 platforms were built within the country.

Iran has attained complete self-sufficiency in all aspects of gas production from South Pars field that include drilling, platform building, pipeline construction, and onshore refineries, which are the four main sectors in extracting gas from South Pars field. All equipment and machinery have become indigenized and the operators are also domestic companies.