Iran Accelerates Development of Farzad B Gas Field on Saudi Maritime Border

By Staff, Agencies

Iran has begun long-delayed development work at the Farzad B gas field, a major offshore reserve it shares with Saudi Arabia in the Gulf. The move follows years of stalled progress caused by foreign sanctions and the withdrawal of international partners.

Local media reported on Saturday that the state-owned Petropars company has initiated roll-up operations for a massive drilling platform at the field, known as Arabiyah on the Saudi side. Farzad B, located 85 kilometers east of Bushehr, contains an estimated 23 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

While Saudi Arabia has been producing from its section since 2016—after a Canadian-led consortium ramped output to 1.2 billion cubic feet per day—Iran’s development was halted in 2014 when a consortium of three Indian state firms abandoned the project. Tehran subsequently shifted to relying solely on domestic companies to advance the strategically important field.

A Petropars contractor said the WHP1 platform is nearly ready for transport to the offshore site near the maritime border. Keyvan Tarighati noted that Petropars and the Iranian Offshore Engineering and Construction Company [IOEC] jointly built the 2,650-ton structure, completed with more than 28,000 person-days of labor and nearly 113,000 inches of welding.

Petropars CEO Hamidreza Saghafi announced that bringing Farzad B online will add around 1 trillion cubic feet [over 28 million cubic meters] of gas to Iran’s daily output. He emphasized that roughly 75% of the field’s reserves lie on the Iranian side, describing the project as one of the most complex undertakings in the country’s energy sector.