“We are interested to come back to Iran when the sanctions are lifted and if the contracts are interesting”, Stephane Michel told Bloomberg on the sidelines of a major conference in Tehran on Saturday during which Iran unveiled 50 oil and gas projects worth $185 billion for development through foreign investment. The country hopes it can reach an agreement with fellow members of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries so that Iran’s planned additional production remains within the 30 million barrels a day OPEC production ceiling, he said.
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Bijan Namdar Zangeneh, Iran’s Minister of Petroleum, on Saturday spoke at an worldwide petroleum conference here. The new 20-year energy contracts framework is being introduced to investors at the Tehran conference, he said. But under the new model, the more they produce, the more they will earn. The model has also limited foreign partners’ participation in any project to five to seven years.
The chapters explain how the future work will be done, specify the term of the contracts, rights and duties of the National Iranian Oil Company and the investors, describe the program of activities as well as financial and accounting issues and shares.
Iranian hardliners, however, condemned the new contracts as “unconstitutional”, saying they will open the way for “infiltration” of the energy sector by Iran’s enemies.
Iran is scheduled in February to hold a conference in London regarding investment and the new contracts which, if sanctions have by then been lifted, could attract United States energy giants.
The nuclear deal, however, has paved the way for new tie-ups and 152 global companies were at Saturday’s event, organisers said, along with 183 Iranian firms. Numerous sanctions were imposed since 2012 because of the country’s nuclear program, which Western nations alleged could be employed for the manufacture of weapons, an allegation denied by Tehran.
He said that inventories suffered a setback requiring more than two million bpd increase to the oil production capacity to meet the 4.7 million bpd.
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The price of oil has fallen to around $45 per barrel from as much as $115 in the middle of previous year. U.S. sanctions on Iran limit it to selling about 1-M BPD a day to China, India, Japan, South Korea, Turkey and Taiwan, with additional purchases of condensate, a light Oil liquid found in Nat Gas deposits, also allowed. Iran plans to begin exporting an additional 500,000 barrels of oil a day six months later in order to double its crude exports.
