Fire in Iran’s largest gas field… details

A large fire broke out at dawn today in one of the buildings of the South Pars gas field located in the city of Assalouyeh in the southern Iranian province of Bushehr, the largest gas field in the world shared by Iran and Qatar.

Iran’s Fars News Agency reported that unknown assailants attacked the Pars field and set fire to the administration offices there.

In a press statement to the same agency, the head of the inspection office in the Paris Special Energy Zone in Assalouyeh, Mokhtar Jawan, said: This morning, an unidentified person or persons entered the Inspection Department, threw incendiary material and set fire to the office of the head and his secretary.

The Iranian official described the damage to the inspection office as minor, noting that the security authorities and competent authorities have opened an investigation to determine “the extent of the incident”.

Zadeh denied that “the documents of the inspection office had been burned”, adding: “Following the incident, the rescue unit and the safety and fire team of the Pars Region Special Organization were sent to the scene and the fire was contained in a short time”.

This is the second intentional fire at Iranian energy facilities in recent months, and in another similar incident in late March, 11 cars caught fire at the petrochemical complex in the southern Iranian city of Bandar-e Mahchahr, where unidentified individuals threw incendiary materials.

On January 1st, a fire broke out at Platform 16 in the South Pars gas field as a result of the gas leak.

Iran’s ILNA news agency said at the time: “The accident reduced gas production by about 15 million cubic meters”.

In recent years, in addition to deliberate damage, other incidents have occurred at Iranian petrochemical complexes, refineries, and other oil equipment, and Iranian official authorities have claimed that some of these attacks were the result of a cyberattack, usually blamed on opposition groups or Israel.

Iran has the world’s second-largest natural gas reserves of 34 trillion cubic meters, and more than 50% of Iran’s natural gas is produced from the southern Pars field.

The South Pars field is a natural gas field located in the Arabian Gulf, shared by Qatar and Iran, and is the largest gas field in the world.