The development of Iran's South Pars gas field has
been delayed, partly as a result of international sanctions, the spokesman for
the Iranian parliament's energy commission said Monday.
The delay was "partly due to giving the work to Chinese contractors,"
since "we cannot award the work to contractors from other nations due to
international sanctions" against Iran,
Emad Hosseini was quoted as telling the Fars
news agency.
"Under our planning, we should have had 30% progress in the South Pars
projects by now, but we are very far behind in the plans," Hosseini said.
Fars reported last week that the nine South
Pars projects awarded in June 2010 to Iranian companies as part of a
$21-billion contract progressed between only 13% and 23% in a contract that was
due for completion in 35 months.
"If we continue like this, we will not finish on time," Hosseini
said.
Many of the projects were reassigned to Iranian firms following the pull-out of
major Western firms, including France's
Total and the Anglo-Dutch Shell, after international sanctions against Iran's
controversial nuclear program were strengthened.
"We had no choice but to resort to Chinese contractors, but they seem to
be unable to carry out projects and we will have to reconsider their
participation," Hosseini said.
Several times in recent months, Iran's
parliament has expressed concern over delays in the development of South Pars,
a huge offshore natural gas field shared between Iran
and Qatar.
Western sanctions against Iran,
tailored under six U.N. resolutions condemning its nuclear program since 2006,
mostly target the country's banking and oil sectors, and are aimed specifically
at slowing the development of South Pars.
Tehran has said
it is able to develop South Pars on its own, notably by giving many of the
projects to companies affiliated to its elite Revolutionary Guards Corps. But
the withdrawal of the Western companies has led to a growing presence of
Chinese oil firms.
Last week media reported that the oil ministry had issued a warning to the
China National Petroleum Corporation, a state company, for not carrying out a
$4.7-billion contract signed in 2009 to develop Phase 11 of South Pars, after
Total withdrew from the project.
In 2010 Beijing became the top economic partner
of oil-rich Iran, which has
the world's second largest natural gas reserves after Russia.