Azadegan oilfield to go out to tender

TEHRAN, Dec. 18 (MNA) – Iranian Oil Minister Zanganeh has said all interested foreign companies were invited to submit tenders for development of Iranian oil and gas fields, including Azadegan. On possibility of assigning the contract for development of South Azadegan oilfield to France’s Total company, Bijan Zanganeh said no promise has been made to the French company in this regard. Iran’s oil minister, while emphasizing that development of all Iranian fields will be carried out merely through international tenders, asserted that the tender for Azadegan will be soon invited. He underscored that so far cooperation agreements have been inked with two or three foreign firms over expansion of the country’s oil fields which had major priority; “the issue reveals that no monopoly exists among foreign companies to develop oil and gas fields of Iran.” Earlier, the senior oil official had stressed that all foreign companies willing to develop Azadegan were required to have an Iranian partner; “Iran would consent to formation of a consortium if a foreign company, along with partnership with an Iranian firm, is eager to join hand with other foreign parties.” So far, giant companies like France’s Total, Royal Dutch Shell, Russia’s Russneft as well as Inpex Corporation of Japan have inked MoUs or confidentiality agreements with National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) to carry out the study phase of South Azadegan developmental project. Previously, the Project Director of the Development Project of South Azadegan Seyed Mahmoud Mar'ashi estimated that the required volume of investment for the project will be less than five billion dollars in order to reach a daily production of 300 to 320 thousand barrels of crude oil. Presently, about 50 thousand barrels of crude oil is being extracted from the joint oil field while completion of the first developmental phase will raise the output to 100 thousand barrels per day by the end of the current year.