Tehran, Moscow agree on Russian investments in Iran’s gas sector
By Sara Rajabova
Iran and Russia have agreed to launch joint projects on development of Iran's gas infrastructure.
The National Iranian Gas Company has signed an agreement with two Russian companies on the implementation of the projects in Iran's gas infrastructure.
To this end, the officials of the Russian companies will pay a visit to Iran in near future to become familiar with the projects.
Iranian Deputy Oil Minister Hamidreza Araqi said the agreement was reached with the two largest gas companies of Russia during recent "World Petroleum" conference held in Moscow on June 15-19, the Shana agency reported.
He said both sides are interested in further cooperation in major projects in Iran.
However, Araqi did not release the Russian companies' names and details of the agreement.
He said the two countries are willing to expand ties as the largest owners of gas reserves in the world.
Earlier, Iran`s Oil Minister Bijan Namdar Zanganeh called for changes to terms of different agreements on Iran's oil to increase foreign investment in the oil and gas sector. At the moment, a special commission is reviewing the terms of the agreements. It is also proposing some reforms to increase foreign investment in oil and gas sector of the country.
He said Iran requires about $ 70 billion of investment in upstream and downstream industries, 30 percent of which belong to downstream industries.
World oil giants, including Royal Dutch Shell, British Petroleum (BP), Malaysia's Petronas, Spain's Repsol, Russia's second-largest oil producer, Lukoil, France's Total and Italy's Eni have expressed interest in returning to the Iranian market following a partial relief in the anti-Iran sanctions that come after Geneva deal in November.
Iran sits atop one of the world's largest natural gas reserves of over 33 trillion cubic meters and, in the near future, the country is set to increase its gas processing and transfer capacity to one billion cubic meters per day from the current level of 600 million cubic meters per day.