Azernews.Az

The National Iranian Oil Company will start selling 15 trillion rials (some $1.2 billion) in bonds in the near future to finance oil and gas projects, the NIOC head said.

Some $400 million will be used for financing offshore oil projects and about $800 million will finance the South Pars gas field development projects, Ahmad Qalehbani added, the Shana news agency reported.

Some $30 billion was invested last year in the Iranian oil industry despite global sanctions, Deputy Oil Minister Mohsen Khojasteh-Mehr said on August 24. Khojasteh-Mehr told the Fars news agency that sanctions on the oil industry, imposed last year, led to a reduction in foreign investments. "But we managed to inject some $30 billion into oil projects," he said.

Oil Minister Rostam Qasemi said in April that at least $30 billion will be invested in the domestic oil industry this year. He added that a significant portion of the amount will be allocated to the South Pars gas field projects.

The South Pars field is shared by Iran and Qatar. The Iranian part of the deposit, which is divided into 29 phases, holds about 14 trillion cubic meters of gas, or about eight percent of the total world reserves.

Qasemi also said that the global economic sanctions against the Islamic republic would not hinder the country's oil industry development.

Iran sits on the world's second largest natural gas reserves, next only to Russia.