Press TV – January 25, 2014
Iran’s oil minister says major world oil companies have voiced readiness to set up shop in the country.
Oil giants attending the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the Swiss city of Davos announced that they were interested to enter the Iranian market, said Bijan Namdar Zangeneh in Tehran after returning from Davos where he attended the conference.
“Iran’s presence at the Davos meeting was very positive and the reaction of prominent international corporations attests to that,” he said.
Zangeneh touched upon his meetings with high-ranking officials of oil companies at the WEF, and said, “These companies were interested in working in Iran and many of them arranged plans for talks.”
He also referred to the Oil Ministry’s plans to develop a new model for oil contracts, and noted that a committee was set up four months ago to examine the existing contracts and pinpoint the merits and demerits of the structure of buy-back deals.
“We are holding talks with oil companies to have their viewpoints as well,” Zangeneh pointed out.
The new model of contracts should fulfill the expectations of the government and, at the same time, attract oil firms, the Iranian minister said.
A draft of the model will be ready by next month and it will be discussed at a meeting of experts in Tehran, Zangeneh projected.
On the sidelines of the OPEC ministerial meeting in Vienna in early December 2013, Zangeneh said Tehran would like to see seven oil giants – namely Total, Royal Dutch Shell, Norway’s Statoil, Eni and British Petroleum, as well as the US Exxon and Conoco – make investment in the Islamic Republic’s energy sector once US-led sanctions are lifted.
On January 20, the Council of the European Union suspended part of the sanctions it had imposed against Iran following the Geneva nuclear deal between Tehran and the Sextet of powers – the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany.
The new measure incorporates suspension of a 2012 ban on insuring and transporting Iran’s crude oil and the sanctions on trade in gold, precious metals and petrochemical products.