Iranian Oil Minister Javad Owji said his ministry has signed investment agreements worth $15.6 billion in the past six months.
In a tweet, Owji said the contracts include 45 agreements and memoranda of understanding for investments in the fields of development of oil and natural gas fields, gathering of oilfield flares’ gas, construction of transfer pipelines, as well as improvement of refineries, ifpnews.com reported.
The minister further stressed that $4.5 billion of the total figure will go into development of oil and gas fields by Iranian and foreign companies.
Owji said his ministry also seeks an agreement with a consortium of Iranian banks to fund the development project of one of the major oil fields and its downstream industries.
Iran has the largest combined reserves of hydrocarbons in the world, with 33 trillion cubic meters of proved extractable natural gas and over 160 billion barrels of proved extractable crude oil.
On Sunday, Owji underlined that his ministry will not wait for the result of the Vienna talks, adding, “We make our efforts to complete oil industry projects by using resources of Iranian banks and domestic companies as well as foreign companies.”
Speaking on the sidelines of the signing ceremony of a memorandum of understanding on the construction of the Pars Petroleum Products Pipeline (Mehraran-Fasa-Shiraz in southern province of Fars), he noted that foreign funding has been used in some development projects in recent months, adding that details of the contracts will be published as needed.
Owji noted that according to plan, an oil industry contract will be signed every two to three weeks using domestic financial resources.
In recent months, the Iranian Parliament supported the Ministry of Oil for signing contracts to develop the country’s oil and gas fields, the minister said.