Source:
"The ... Goreh-Jask pipeline project saw a major advance last week with the commencement last week of offshore pipe-laying operations.
... the early-production phase of the Jask Oil Terminal Development Project is 70 per cent complete, allowing the project to come online by late March 2021.
After the completion of this first phase of offshore pipeline laying, the Goreh-Jask pipeline will begin full pumping tests aimed at ascertaining its capacity to transfer 350,000 barrels per day (bpd) of light, heavy, and ultra-heavy crude oil through the 1,100 km-long, 46 inch diameter pipeline that runs from the Goreh oil terminal in the north-west Bushehr Province to Mobarak Mount in the western Jask region along the Sea of Oman.
... The initial focus of the oil-transfer chain across the Goreh-Jask pipeline will be the huge oil fields cluster in the West Karoun region, which are the current focus of plans between Iran and China to boost short-term oil production as part of the two countries’ 25-year plan.
... After the initial testing of the first phase infrastructure has been completed, with 350,000 bpd transferred, the figure will be increased to a daily delivery capacity 460,000 bpd of heavy crude oil and 254,000 bpd of light crude oil to export terminals.
Phase 2 will involve the transfer more than one million barrels of crude oil to export terminals.
... the West Karoun oil fields’ cluster alone comprises North and South Azadegan, North and South Yaran, and Yadavaran – plus some lesser fields – which together contain at least 67 billion barrels of oil in place.
The oil will then be stored once it has arrived in Jask in one of the 20 storage tanks each capable of storing 500,000 barrels of oil, in the first phase (totalling 10 million barrels)
for later loading on to very large crude carriers (VLCCs) headed from the Gulf of Oman and into the Arabian Sea and then on to the Indian Ocean.
The second phase will see an expansion to an overall storage capacity of 30 million barrels.
These VLCCs will be accommodated in shipping facilities costing around US$200 million in the first phase, although the plans are to expand capacity to allow for further regular shipping of various oil-adjunct and petrochemical products in particular demand in Asia.
... the pipeline will allow Iran another method by which it can export huge amounts of oil without being prey to U.S. sanctions and it will also allow Iran to do this whilst at the same time causing chaos for a third of the rest of the world’s oil shipments through blockading the Strait of Hormuz, should it wish to do so again.
“The logistical model Iran has at present is not sustainable in the current circumstances, with around 90 per cent of all of its oil for export currently loaded at Kharg Island – with most of the remaining loads going through terminals on Lavan and Sirri - making it an obvious and easy target for the U.S. and its proxies to cripple Iran’s oil sector and therefore its economy,” a senior oil and gas industry source who works closely with Iran’s Petroleum Ministry told OilPrice.com.
" ... Iran wants to be able to use the threat – or reality – of closing the Strait of Hormuz for political reasons without also completing destroying its own oil exports revenue stream,” he said.
... Additionally positive for Iran is that having a huge oil storage capacity available just a short direct sea journey away from Pakistan and then on into China is likely to result in the final go-ahead for the construction of the Iran-Pakistan oil and gas pipeline, and then put further pressure on the developing India-UAE-U.S. relationship as India may well think that resuscitating the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline is preferable to the current plans with the UAE.
It also means that Iran can send oil supplies – and anything else it wants in the tankers – to the Houthi faction in Yemen to keep a constant threat to the Saudi southern flank ... "