Groundwork for laying a subsea pipeline between Iran and Oman, enabling the Islamic Republic to export gas to the Sultanate, has begun.
According to a report on iranoilgas.com, having prepared its initial desk study on Iran-Oman gas export sub-sea pipeline project, the Iranian Offshore Engineering and Construction Co. (IOEC) has started to provide the basic engineering documents for the onshore sector of the pipeline.
Late last year, Oman reported a progress of 80% in preliminaries to launch the pipeline project to import natural gas from Iran.
Oman’s Ambassador to Tehran, Saud bin Ahmad Al-Bardani, was quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying that the pipeline project will have a significant contribution to the promotion of trade between the two countries.
Iran has announced agreements with Oman to convert part of its natural gas to LNG in the Sultanate. The deal is part of Iran’s ambition to join the LNG retail market, the state-run Mehr news agency says.
According to an MoU which had been signed between Oman and Iran’s oil and energy ministers four years ago, the two countries agreed to build a gas pipeline.
The project of transferring gas from Iran’s Kish field to Oman will cover a 200km pipeline which for the most part would be located under the water.
As part of the first phase of the project, Iran will export 1mn cubic feet (mcf) of gas to the Sultanate, and plans to eventually raise it to 3bn cubic feet per day (bcf).
