February 9, 2015 [Tehran Times] - A huge floating storage unit (FSU) with a capacity to store over 2.2 million barrels of crude oil came on stream on Sunday in the Persian Gulf.
The FSU is 337 meters long, 60 meters wide and 33 meters high. Two 16-inch pipelines, each 7 kilometers long, will carry the crude oil produced in the offshore Soroush and Norouz oilfields to the floating terminal.
South Korea’s Samsung started building the FSU in 2008 and finished it at a cost of about $300 million. The International Energy Agency (IEA) has said that a substantial increase in Iranian oil storage capacity will give the country more flexibility to export crude.
Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh says the country will double its oil exports within two months if sanctions against it end. Iran currently exports around 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of oil. At OPEC’s June meeting Zanganeh said Iran could increase oil exports by 500,000 bpd immediately after any lifting of sanctions and could pump 4 million bpd in less than three months after.
Iran’s crude oil output was projected to remain 2.8 million barrels per day in December 2014, unchanged compared to previous months. Iran plans to increase crude oil output to 5.7 million barrels per day by 2018, according to Zanganeh. Iran, with 157 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, holds the world’s fourth-biggest oil deposits, according to the BP Statistical Review of June 2014.
