Pars Oil and Gas Company has set up a specialized valve-repair workshop at sea, cutting the time South Pars gas platforms spend offline for overhauls and returning them to production faster, a company executive said.
Faster turnarounds are worth about 28 million cubic meters of gas a day and more than $5 million in economic benefit for the country, said Alireza Sarmadi, the company's production and operations manager. The effort is aimed at helping narrow Iran's gas shortfall.
"With the overhaul teams' work and the launch of the offshore valve workshop, platform downtime and the time needed for major repairs have dropped noticeably," Sarmadi said. The facility, he said, has largely resolved one of the company's biggest headaches during overhauls.
The workshop repairs valves of all sizes, from the smallest to the largest. That includes valves that fail during the year at the request of technical inspection and operations units, as well as those due for annual calibration. All can be serviced offshore and returned to service without being shipped to land.
Previously, valves had to be sent to onshore workshops for repairs. Now the work is done on site, in the shortest possible time, Sarmadi said.
The shorter the repair and shutdown period, the sooner a platform resumes output, he said—a point that carries particular weight after the third imposed war, as Iran works to ease its gas deficit.
Getting a platform back online faster preserves 28 million cubic meters of daily production capacity, valued at more than $5 million for the country, he said.
Developing such specialized offshore capabilities also lowers operating costs, speeds the return of equipment and platforms to service, and helps keep gas flowing from the shared South Pars field, Sarmadi added.