Iran to accept foreign bids for 17 oil, gas projects

Published February 13th, 2001 - 03:00 GMT

Iran will in the coming months launch a major international tender inviting oil giants to bid for 17 contracts to develop oil and gas reserves in southern Iran, the Jomhuri-Eslami paper said Tuesday.

Hojatollah Qanimifard, head of Iranian oil ministry's international department, was quoted as saying the contracts would be signed according to the customary "buy-back" formula, which means the foreign company recoups its investment and gets its profit from a share of production.

The bids will cover the oil and gas fields of Tanghestan, Tshemeh-Khosh, Dehloran and Sarvestan, as well as phases 9, 10 and 11 of the giant South Pars field and Sirri C and Sirri D, Qanimifard said without revealing the value of the projects. Iran is under a unilateral U.S. embargo, which provides for measures against companies investing more than U.S. $40 million in the country's oil industry.

In September, Iran invited bids for development of the last zones in the South Pars gas project, considered to be the biggest field in the world. Launched by French oil giant Total-Fina-Elf, development of the first three zones is already under way.

The cost of the first eight zones is put at $4.3 billion. Iran has the world's second largest gas reserves after Russia, and is the second largest oil producer in OPEC after Saudi Arabia.

It is seeking to raise its crude output to 5.0 million barrels per day in the coming years, which according to experts necessitates significant foreign investment. --AFP.